In the Name of Science
by True Colours
Summary: She called a question...and the forest answered? Caught between a jar-headed marine and a hostile alien, Grace finds her life getting more complicated than a mere science investigation...not that that was so simple itself. Alternate pairing!
1. Grace's Conundrum

**In the Name of Science**

**Chapter 1: Grace's Conundrum**

**Disclaimer: **We don't own Avatar.

**A/N: Hi, this is a fic co-written by Essence of Gold and myself. We have done one other for Avatar, 'Ways to Annoy the Na'vi,' which is posted on her account. Anyway, we call dibs on the first fic of this pairing, and one of the first alternate pairing fics on the fandom – though I think some people have already beaten us to it with Jake/Tsu'tey. Ah, the thrill of a young fandom! It's something I haven't experienced before. Anyway, the bunny is Essence's, but most of this first chapter is mine, and I seem to have already twisted it out of its original humour guise into something more serious...as well as causing it to mutate from a oneshot into a chapter fic...but this, for those of you who don't know me, is what I do best.**

**True**

She liked plants more than people.

'Well, it's partly true. At least when the plants are annoying the heck out of you, you know it's not personal.'

Grace was feeling frazzled. Sure, the new recruit had survived his first day. In fact, he'd managed to get in with the People by some fluke, and though his head was as empty as a jar he seemed eager enough to learn. But if he provoked the Na'vi into slaughtering his avatar, she would be the one with hell to pay.

'Rule number one of leadership,' she said out loud, 'everything is your fault.'

She had been feeling like taking a daisy cutter to the entire jungle for the past few days – this new research about the chemical links in their roots was proving stickier than she'd anticipated – but right now the slow sway of the trees was proving soothing. So what if they wouldn't tell her what the heck they were up to? Like she'd said, it was nothing personal. A light breeze rustled the canopy far above her head, letting shafts of light peep through. Her phosphorescent spots shimmered whenever the motion of the leaves plunged them into shadow; a beauty she'd never known in her human form. Sitting alone in the forest was nine kinds of dangerous, but what did she care? It was peaceful.

_Synapses..._

'How the HELL do those tree roots link up!' she yelled, leaping to her feet. 'Dammit, it's almost like they're nerve cells or something! That's the closest comparison we've got, but it's just...' She leaned on a tree, clenching her fists against the bark. 'And every time I settle down to study a section of forest, the fffffff..._ricking _mining idiots chop it down!'

There was a log leaning against the tree, slanting diagonally down to the ground. Grace sighed wearily, spun away from the tree on her heel and flopped down on it, slumping wearily against the trunk.

'Video log is not cutting it,' she muttered, rubbing her knuckles into her eyes. 'Ranting out loud to myself like this. Good thing there's no-one here to listen.' She dropped her hands and peered up into the canopy. 'Well, apart from the Na'vi.' _They're probably watching us right now, _she'd told Jake, and she was certain that it was true – well, as certain as she could be, given how rarely she saw them. _They're getting more wary, _she thought. _Stupid trigger-happy marines, screwing up relations. _The frustrating thing was that the Na'vi could probably answer all her questions about the trees – they could give her the information she needed for her studies, even if they didn't have a full scientific understanding. And thanks to Colonel Quaritch and the mining corporation, the only one who had any hope of working with the people was the benign but bumbling Jake.

'I don't think I can stand to sit and watch while he screws it up,' she said wearily. 'Gotta _talk _to these people.' She straightened up on her log, glancing around once more. 'Na'vi?' she called. 'Anyone? Like I said to Dreamwalker Jake yesterday, I'm pretty sure you're watching, and it's worth a try. Do you fancy coming down and answering a few questions about your trees?'

There was a moment's silence, during which her cry rang emptily in her ears. Then a Na'vi male thumped to the ground not three feet in front of her.

'GAH!' Grace yelled, jumping in surprise and tumbling off her log. She landed on her back with a muffled '_oof'_, her ankles still hooked over the log above her head. From this undignified position, she saw the Na'vi man smile.

It was not a nice smile. It was the kind of smile that said: _'show one sign of weakness and I will eat you.'_

Fortunately, Grace did a fairly good line in those herself – but usually to soldiers and stubborn mining giants, not giant blue warriors armed to the teeth with toxic arrows. She unhooked her legs and picked herself up, sticking her chin out as she looked the newcomer in the eye.

'Thanks,' she said dryly.

He stared at her silently.

'Uh...why are you showing yourself?' she continued, a little of her composure trickling away under his maybe-about-to-turn-murderous stare.

One corner of his mouth twisted up. 'You called, Dreamwalker. So I come.' There was a pause. 'That surprises you? Why? You have never tried calling before.'

Grace relaxed a little. He seemed in a talking mood at least.

'Why did you call, Dreamwalker?' His voice grew lower, his eyes narrowing slightly.

'I want to ask you about the trees,' she replied. She felt her avatar muscles bunching, prepared to run as his scowl deepened.

'What do you want to know?' he asked with a smile that was more than half snarl. 'How best to cut them down? Or how to mix arrow-poisons like the People?'

'Neither,' Grace said steadily. He seemed taken aback by her answer. Clearly he had thought that his guesses were right, and that she would be shamed into silence. She took a breath and then went for the plunge. 'Actually I want to know about the links between the roots and how they are used by your People.'

He gaped at her, his coiled-up stance going slack with shock. Either he hadn't been expecting the sky people to notice the connection at all, or he was amazed that she'd dared to ask. Grace had to admit that the last part of her statement had been pure bluff. She had no proof that the Na'vi found any use for the connection. But her guess seemed to be near the mark, because the man didn't attempt to deny it. He pulled himself together and smiled again.

'I am sorry, Dreamwalker,' he said, not sounding sorry at all. 'This I don't tell you. Sky people know the secrets of the Na'vi, and it makes us weak. No, I don't tell you. You must search, and maybe you will find out. Or maybe not.' He grinned more broadly, the threat plain in his tone. Whatever the secret, it was closely guarded.

Grace sat back down on the log and pulled up a knee, propping her elbow on it and resting her chin in her hand.

'I think,' she said, slowly and distinctly, 'that the trees communicate. Have you learned that word, hunter? It means, put simply, to talk.'

She peeked at him out of the corner of her eye. His smirk was still in place, but she thought she saw him start.

She slipped into Na'vi. 'The members of the body can talk.' She raised a hand, flourishing it slowly in front of her face. 'From my fingers down to my toes, I am connected, and it's all controlled from up here.' She tapped the side of her head. She knew that it was dangerous to push him this way, but she was feeling reckless. 'So maybe all the trees talk, and are all controlled from somewhere. But where, that is my question. And _how_...' She couldn't keep the frustration out of her tone now. It came seeping in, showing how mercilessly this question had plagued her since she first discovered the links in the roots. '_How _do the people tap into it?'

'What do you mean, Dreamwalker?' the man asked, also in Na'vi.

Grace made a huffy noise. 'Don't play the innocent with me!' she barked. 'I've seen how you connect to your horses and your _Ikran. _You must do the same thing with the tree network, but _how?_ I can't see any way for you to plug yourselves straight into the ground!' She lapsed back into English, slamming her fist against the trunk of the tree.

'And why are you wanting to know all this, Dreamwalker?' the man asked. Grace jumped. She realised that in the last few seconds she had almost forgotten him, too caught up in her thirst for knowledge.

'Unless all sky people dream walk, they cannot hear the tree-voices like the People. Maybe your false bodies cannot. Maybe only true Na'vi. One of your kind has been set to train among us, but we think he will fail. He will not be able to bond with the _ikran. _He cannot bond with the trees, so why do you want to know? '

'I want to know it,' she answered, emphasising each word with a gesture of her hand in mid-air, 'because I am curious. Maybe you are right. Maybe our avatar bodies cannot hear the trees...but until you told me so, I did not know that the trees spoke. I only knew that the trees were connected. Now, I want to know how they speak. You've only given me more questions, hunter.'

'Why do you ask these questions?' His voice was little more than a whisper now. 'The bonds are no use for a sky peoples' weapon, you know.'

'No use,' Grace echoed, with a brief chuckle. She leaned back against the tree, closing her eyes. 'Hell, don't I know it. I got enough people telling me so. No, I know it's no use to me. I'm just curious.'

There was a silence, she didn't know how long. Her eyes were still shut. Her mind strayed over the strangeness of it all, not just the small problem of the connections but the larger problems: the project, the planet, the distance from Earth and the whole sorry mess they were steering themselves into. _I want out, _she thought, and then a faint rustle caused her to open her eyes. The Na'vi male had stood.

'Yes, you are curious,' he said softly. 'That is why I come.'

He turned and began to walk away.

'No, wait! Grace stumbled after him, suddenly frantic without quite knowing why. 'Wait, that's not all I wanted to ask about! I have questions...'

He half-turned. 'Many questions. Like child, know nothing, want to know everything. But why?' His brow furrowed. He was staring at the ground now, and seemed to be talking more to himself than to her. 'Why? Leave now, but maybe come back.'

And then he melted into the jungle before her eyes, leaving her to gaze, dumbfounded, at the place where he had stood.

* * *

'Tsu'Tey – I knew it,' Grace muttered, hunched over her laptop. As soon as she'd got back to base she'd run a search on all the known Na'vi on the RDA database, inputting height, gender and markings to bring up a list of possible names. Finally she had found a photograph she recognised, distant and blurry – hiding cameras where the Na'vi wouldn't find them was well nigh impossible – but unmistakably the male she had talked to in the jungle. Next in line to the chief, no less, and dangerous by all accounts. She remembered telling Jake about had he been doing talking to her? Underneath the picture were printed the words: Tsu'tey _(Tsoo-tay), _Male. Father: Eytukan, clan leader. Mother: Mo'at, clan mage/priestess. HOSTILE.

'Hostile,' Grace murmured, shaking her head. 'A hostile hostile. What a distinction.' She pressed a button, sending the information to the printer. It was against policy to waste paper on non-essential printouts, but right now she didn't care. Reading off the screen did her head in.

She whipped the printout off the copier just as Jake wheeled himself into the room. She noticed how he flinched at her sudden movement, like he was expecting her to lay straight into him. She felt a pang of remorse, but looking at the paper she thought she saw a way to make it up to him. The RDA were better informed about the more eminent members of the Na'vi tribe, those who had negotiated with them in the early days, but even so the information on Tsu'tey was pitifully sparse. She would ask Jake if he'd found out anything more, and hopefully the conversation would help to put him more at ease.

'Never thought I'd find myself asking a Marines grunt for scientific info,' she muttered to herself. 'Jake?'

He had been just about to wheel himself through the door, but hearing her call he spun himself round to face her. 'Yeah?'

Abruptly Grace felt at ease. With this plain-speaking soldier she could cut straight to the point.

'I encountered an indigenous in the forest today,' she said, waving her printout under his nose. 'I've been looking him up on the database but there isn't much. I wondered if you would know any more about him.'

Jake came wheeling back towards her. 'Well, I've only been in their village for a day, you know, but I'll take a look.'

'His name is Tsu'tey,' she said, walking to meet him with the paper held out. 'In case that means nothing to you, I have his photo.'

Jake's eyebrows went up, and the corners of his mouth went down. 'Tsu'tey?' he repeated ponderously. 'You told me he was next in line to their leader, right?'

Grace nodded in approval. 'Yes, I did, but that's about the extent of my knowledge. Anything to add?' She handed him the paper.

His reaction was nothing short of comical. 'Oh my God!' he exclaimed, nearly dropping the sheet in shock. '_That _Tsu'tey?'

Grace found herself fighting back laughter as she answered. 'Yes, that Tsu'tey. Do you know him?'

'The guy's a complete psycho!' Jake declared emphatically. 'He was there when his sister Neytiri brought me in. Some of them seemed ready to listen to me, but _he_ was all for hacking me up and roasting me for the banshees! And you say you _met _this guy? And he didn't kill you on sight? And you _survived_?'

Well, she seemed to have put him at ease, at any rate.

'Shocking as it may seem to you, jarhead, it is possible to survive out there without military training. Not all of us have your knack for stirring the natives into a homicidal rage within three seconds of opening our mouths.'

'Huh,' Jake said. 'I still say you were lucky.'

'Maybe so.' Grace smiled faintly, recalling the Na'vi's words. _You are curious. That is why I come. '_Maybe so. You hungry, jarhead?'

'Is this going to become like a thing with you?' Jake asked.

'I'm afraid you sealed your doom with the "Jarhead clan" bluff,' Grace replied, moving behind him and taking the handles of his chair. 'Come on, let's get some dinner.'

Raising her voice to call Norm, she wheeled Jake out of the room, her eyes trained on the picture in his lap. Hmmm, Tsu'Tey. An unusual name. Tomorrow she would look up its meaning in Na'vi.

**A/N: So how did you like it? Surprising? OOC? Completely unfollowable? My excuse for Grace's characterisation in this chapter is that I think that her fierceness is just a defence concealing a deeper and more thoughtful personality...your opinions, anyone?**

**True and Essence**


	2. Twenty Questions

**Twenty Questions**

**Disclaimer: **We no own.

**A/N: So here is chapter two. I realise that a couple of things may not have been clear in chapter one, so here's an explanation: **

**Daisy-cutters are a type of bomb which the RDA were planning to use at the end of Avatar. They are used to clear large sections of jungle because they flatten everything for miles around, and they are called daisy cutters because the destruction is in a daisy-shaped pattern.**

**Synapses are the links between nerve cells. So when Grace thinks '**_**synapses' **_**she is being reminded of the links between the trees.**

**Also, I said that Neytiri was Tsu'tey's sister in the first chapter. Watching the film left me confused as to the relationship between them, but I think I'm just going to leave them as brother and sister now. So Tsu'tey is a free man :).**

**_New A/N: I've watched the film again, and even though I stand by leaving them as brother and sister, I get that they were intended mates now. So I'll bear that in mind for any future fics. I've also edited the end of the chapter to get rid of Norm's OOC-ness, and make the 'slinger' a thanator. I still say that Norm would be capable of anger in a scenario like this - look at the way he's throwing punches after the destruction of hometree! - but I hadn't realised when I watched the film for the first time how new he is. So I made it Max instead._**

Grace stepped into the lab and closed the door softly behind her. She wasn't exactly sneaking, but heading out into the forest on her own was technically forbidden. She might get away with it occasionally, but two days in a row was pushing it.

Still, there was no serious danger. The Na'vi viewed her with a relatively friendly eye due to her time teaching at the school during the early days, and a lone woman without a gun was unlikely to cause alarm in any case. She had told Norm where she was going, but he'd been too wrapped up in his work to really consider it properly – which was of course why she'd chosen him to tell. And with any luck the others would never know or worry. She needed to get out there by herself; it was so much easier to think and too many people with guns just got in the way.

'Dr Augustine?'

Grace, half-way into her translation machine, jumped violently, and for a horrible moment thought she was going to wind up sprawling on the floor in an action replay of the day before. She looked around and realised that she wasn't alone after all. Jake was sitting on the side of his machine, watching her quizzically. The room had looked empty because in his wheelchair he was hidden behind the machinery. He hadn't seen her for the same reason.

'Call me Grace,' she said affably. 'What are you doing in here?'

'Life starts early in the village, remember?' he replied, 'and I could ask you the same question.'

Grace cursed inwardly as she recalled the situation. Of course, he also had to go out early in order to continue his training with the Na'vi. She had forgotten, and now he'd caught her, fair and square, sneaking out. Well, _not _sneaking, but still.

'I'm heading out to collect some samples,' she said as casually as she could, then realised that she hadn't needed to even give him that much information. She could have just lied, and said she was going to exercise her avatar. Feeling about ready to get out of the machine and go bang her head against the wall, she continued: 'what's it to you?'

'I thought we weren't supposed to head out on our own,' Jake said. 'I thought it was against regulations. It's dangerous out there and –'

'Tell me something I don't know,' Grace cut him off. 'But as my gallant protector got himself caught by the Na'vi on his first day, it looks like I'm on my own.' She lay down, pulled the apparatus together around herself and then twisted her head to look at Jake. 'Like I said, the natives aren't out to get all of us. Only the jarheaded ones with guns.'

Jake wheeled himself backwards, holding up his hands in an appeasing gesture. 'Sure, fine. You know best, O mighty leader.'

'That's better,' she approved, and then hastily closed the capsule over herself.

_Okay, mind blank, mind _blank_ - _

The machine gave an ominous jolt. A moment later, there was a loud bleep, and then the rising buzz of machinery...

_Woah..._

* * *

Grace opened her golden eyes with a sigh of relief. She had been sure for a moment that the machine was going to conk out, forcing her to climb anticlimactically back out and face Jake, who was sure to be feeling sore after her stinging remarks. Looking back, she already thought she'd laid it on a little thick, which probably accounted for his sarcastic response. In fact, the difficult translation probably wasn't the fault of the machine at all. Most likely it was a result of her having difficulty in keeping her mind blank, usually such an easy part of the transition into one's avatar. She shook her head as she rose to her feet, dispelling the gloomy thoughts. She could make it up to him later.

_Don't you seem to be making it up to him an awful lot?_

_Shut up, brain. _She needed to get on. The jungle was calling, it's prospects suddenly and inexplicably brighter than the day before.

There was a spring in her step as she left the path and plunged into the forest. She could get around so much quicker in this body, and it was a wonderful relief to be free of the nicotine craving which she had been resisting in a corner of her mind all morning. She knew that when she returned to her human body she would probably find herself desperate for a cigarette and screaming at everybody in sight, but who cared? Grace reflected briefly on how lucky she was: a new body, a new chance.

But it would only be a true chance if she could stay in this body forever. This time was just a respite; she always had to wake up back as her old, ginger-haired self, who had to smoke to keep herself calm in the face of her impossible experiments and the bloody mining corporation.

Shaking her head again she broke into a run. She felt free and...excited? She grinned. Clearly it was going to be one of the good days, the days when the planet seemed as wonderful and new as it had the day she had first heard of the project. Of course, it was unlikely that the Na'vi Tsu'tey would ever appear again, or that he would be able to provide her with any really useful information, but if she could have a few carefree moments she wasn't complaining.

Tsu'tey. She wondered again what his name meant – it fit him, somehow, and seemed to make perfect sense. Watching him the previous day had been just as fascinating as their actual conversation – she recalled again the way the he could be completely invisible until he wished to be seen, and how he had melted back into the forest the moment he chose to, as though he were part of it.

Which he was. He had lived his whole life here – that was why she wanted to talk to him, to all the Na'vi. She was speaking to someone who had been born on a different planet to her. A green planet, beautiful and overwhelming as the creatures who called it home...

Grace burst into a clearing, and found herself face to face with the Na'vi warrior, perched in the lower branches of a tree.

She skidded to a halt, heart pounding in shock at his sudden appearance. She tried to keep any vulnerable emotion off her face, however, as she greeted him formally in Na'vi:

'On this morning I see you.' She bowed slightly, then added: 'I wasn't expecting to meet you here.'

He jumped down off his tree and strode forward.

'I had to see you again.'

Grace froze.

'Wait, _what_?'

Tsu'tey stopped. 'I had to see you again,' he repeated, slowly and clearly, as though talking to someone mentally challenged.

'Wait, _wh_ – ' Grace realised she was moving into a circular conversation, and blushed. _Dammit. _'Why? This is too – '

He continued to approach, very close...

Aggressively close.

'What do you think you are doing?' he growled in English. 'This time dreamwalkers have gone too far.'

'I don't understand!' blustered Grace, now completely confused.

'Don't pretend you don't know!' he snarled. Raising a hand, he waved it to underline his words as though he would rather be hitting something.

'Dreamwalker comes to the camp, train with us; say he will be one of the people. I never thought he would survive even one day, but he is serious! _You have gone too far!_'

Comprehension dawned. 'Oh!' Grace blurted. 'You mean the jarhead?' _I guess he didn't realise how that phrase is usually interpreted in English._

He blinked at her, momentarily distracted from his tirade. 'Jarhead? The Jarhead clan, it truly exists? The way he spoke it, I thought he lied.'

'Does it really exist?' Grace said, shaking her head ruefully. 'Hell yeah, we've got plenty of jarheads.'

'So, he speaks truth,' Tsu'tey grinned to himself. Then his expression hardened. 'But he would just as soon lie –'

'You wanted to see me?' Grace interrupted.

He looked her straight in the eye.

'Your dreamwalker trains with the Omatacaya.'

'He does indeed. What seems to be the problem?'

Tsu'tey took another step towards her.

'I want him to get out.'

Grace folded her arms. 'Well, I'm afraid there's not a lot I can do about that,' she said, and watched as the same stunned expression appeared on his face as had claimed it the previous day when she dared to continue questioning him. She felt a trace of smugness. Then he pulled himself together.

'You are Jakesully's leader, no? You must tell him that he cannot continue the training.'

'I could tell him that,' Grace agreed, 'but if you recall, it wasn't my idea. It was the idea of your chief. So if you want Jake to leave, you will have to take it up with him. I could order Jake not to dreamwalk any more, but if he stopped the training your people would kill his body, and I'm afraid I'm not prepared to let that happen.'

'What does it matter if we kill his body?' Tsu'tey paced in a wide circle, then turned sharply on her. 'What does it matter if I kill yours now? Do you not all have Sky bodies to run back to?' For a moment Grace thought he might be genuinely about to attack her, but then he turned contemptuously away and began to stride off. She expected him to vanish into the forest once more, but instead he sprang back into the tree he had first been sitting in, settled himself on a branch and turned to face her.

'Well, dreamwalker, I am sure you have another question for me.'

_Why's he suddenly gone from murderous to helpful? _Grace wondered. _Trap, most likely. Or ambush. Ah well. _With a mental shrug she began to approach the tree as well.

'Yes, I do.' She searched around for a problem that had been bothering her, aside from the issue of the network in the trees, then continued in Na'vi. 'I've noticed a kind of moss or grass that grows in the more open spaces of the forest. Quite a rare one. Do you know...how it makes its seeds?' She grasped a branch and made to begin climbing, but Tsu'tey grabbed her arm and hoisted her up one-handed.

'Dreamwalker, none of the people know _how _a plant makes its seeds. Maybe your people do; you seem to know a very great deal.' His tone made it very clear what he thought about that. 'Mother Ey'wa makes all things grow.'

'I see.' Grace nodded slowly. She hadn't really expected him to have a useful answer to that exact question. She chewed her lower lip, considering how to put it in terms he would understand. 'Do you know of any creatures...that feed from it, without actually pulling up and eating the growth?' _What pollinates the grass _was what she wanted to know. She hadn't been able to find any vector for the pollen.

Tsu'tey was staring up into the air. Suddenly he made a snatching motion with his hands, cupping them tightly together. As Grace leaned forward he held them out to her.

'Look,' he said in English. 'Look close.'

Grace bent her head as he slowly opened his hands. Perched on his palm was a tiny, jewel-bright insect, a little like a dragon-fly but smaller.

'Little _riti _drinks from the flowers, like you say,' he whispered, bending over the creature as well. 'Difficult to spot. Harder to catch.' He glanced up at her briefly. 'He moves from flower to flower and the seeds follow him.' He blew gently on his palm and the _riti _took off, flashing quickly out of sight. 'In our cold season the seeds travel on the wind, searching for new places. Pure spirits.'

Another scientist might have snapped '_oh, sod the pure spirits!' _But not Grace. Instead she asked carefully:

'Pure in the same way that the _atokirina _are pure?' Where the Na'vi saw a spiritual link, she might find a scientific one.

Tsu'tey looked t her long and steadily. 'Yes,' he answered at last. 'Pure as the _atokirina_ are pure, though less so.' _So the grass might have something to do with whatever plant it is that the _atokirina_ come from. And either or both of them might allow the Na'vi to access the tree network._ 'And now, dreamwalker,' Tsu'tey continued, 'it is my turn to ask you a question.' He drew an arrow from the quiver on his back and began to turn it slowly in his hands. 'How do you know of the _atokirina _spirits?'

'Um,' Grace said. She knew that telling the truth at this point – that Jake had heard it from Neytiri and told her – would almost certainly land the jarhead in trouble, but on the other hand Tsu'tey might well spot a lie, and that would be sure to make him angry. So she answered honestly.

'Jake Sully told me.'

'_Jakesully. _I knew it.' He drew his fingers over the fletching of the arrow with a faint rustling sound, his expression black. 'This is what I tell you yesterday: dreamwalkers find our secrets, and it weakens us. He should not be among us, he should not have told you this!'

The arrow was making Grace distinctly nervous. She sat still and silent, her eyes fixed on his hands, trying not to show any fear. The tense seconds lengthened, and then he looked up with another of those threatening smiles.

'You are very silent,' he observed. 'What, no more questions?'

'Two, actually,' she replied as coolly as she could. 'What does your name mean, and what are you planning to do with that arrow?'

He laughed. It was quite a grim laugh, but it still held more genuine humour than she had ever seen from him before. In fact, though her knowledge of the seeds had upset him, she had noticed that he seemed to be in a better mood since he had succeeded in catching the _riti _fly.

'I haven't decided yet,' he answered, 'and my name?' His brow furrowed. 'Well, you know it comes from two words in the language of the People. _Tsua_ is tall or strong, it changes, depending on...on...'

'Context?' Grace suggested.

'Yes, depending on context. All together, great. Here, it is both. And _e'tey_ is a tree. So together it is _tall tree, strong tree. Tsu'tey._'

'I see. Guess I should have been able to figure that out for myself. It was the running together of the two words that got me,' Grace said. A pause. 'It suits you.'

Tsu'tey grinned. 'You only think that because in your sky body you are so small.'

'No, I think you are tall, even for one of the People.'

'I suppose so. Taller than Jakesully, taller than you.' His hands were still running over the arrow. Suddenly he looked down and made a tutting sound. Apparently he had found a spot on the shaft that was less than straight. He pulled out a small knife and began to pare it carefully down, resting the point against the bark of the tree. Grace relaxed. If he had decided to settle down to work on the arrow, she thought she might be justified in assuming that he wasn't about to kill her with it.

He was silent for a few minutes, working up a steady rhythm with his knife, and then he looked at her once more.

'And you, your name is _Grace Augustine._' He pronounced the words slowly and deliberately, as though they were difficult to get out. '_Doctor_Grace. What does your name mean?'

'Grace,' she said. _Oh, help. _How to explain the meaning of Grace? Why couldn't she have a simple, literal name like _tall tree_? But she gave it a go. 'Well, grace has two meanings, one coming from the other. First, it means...the grace of God. You know, you have your goddess, the mother Ey'wa. But some of the sky people believe in other Gods, and they say that he has grace...it means he gives freely, he loves and protects. They say that he gives us grace, so that we can do right. And the second meaning of grace...is to move gracefully.' Now that was _really _impossible to describe. 'I don't know...co-ordinated, elegant...' Did he even know what these words meant? 'All the People move gracefully,' she said. 'You have to.'

'I think I understand you,' he said. 'And which grace is yours?'

'Oh, I don't know! It's probably meant to be both, but I think neither.'

'Neither?' he asked in surprise. 'How can your name not mean anything about you?'

'We're named at birth,' she told him shortly.

'So are the Na'vi, but we choose names that will fit the child.'

'And how do you know what name will suit a child when it's just a baby?'

'Mother Ey'wa tells us.'

'Ey'wa tells you everything,' Grace said grumpily. 'Don't you people ever think for yourselves?'

As soon as the words were out of her mouth she realised that she might have gone too far, but no arrow plunged between her shoulder-blades.

'Of course we do,' Tsu'tey said, surprisingly mildly. 'Nobody told me to come here.' He went back to paring down his arrow.

Grace settled herself comfortably into the fork of the tree. Trying to explain the meaning of grace had put her in a bad mood, but it was passing off now. She'd done enough talking; the silence was comfortable. She watched Tsu'tey idly while he worked, and found her eyes drawn to his tail, which flicked and swayed continuously while he worked, like a cat's. She smiled in amusement, and then twisted round to look over her shoulder and saw that her own tail was flicking and swaying too. She nearly giggled as she took conscious control over it, lifting it up and twitching it first one way and then the other. Being taller, bluer and wider-eyed, all of that she could take in her stride, but having an entirely new limb...that was something else.

'What are you laughing at?' Tsu'tey asked her.

'Oh!' Grace replied, looking up from her tail. 'I was just thinking about –'

Suddenly Tsu'tey froze. As she watched he raised his head and sniffed the air twice, his nostrils flaring. The silence seemed to have turned suddenly ominous; she heard a disturbed bird screech somewhere in the depths of the jungle.

Then Tsu'tey's eyes snapped onto her.

'You go now,' he said, and stood up on the branch.

'W-what?' Grace stammered, thoroughly taken aback, scrambling to her feet as well. 'Why?'

'Don't ask _questions_!' he snapped. 'Go!' He turned his head towards the Na'vi camp. 'I return to Home Tree now. You must go back to sky people's camp.'

'Now look here,' Grace said, 'just because you're not here doesn't mean I'm not entitled to stay out here if I –'

He brandished the arrow in her face. She started backwards and felt her foot slip on the mossy branch. With a snarl he lunged forward and seized the front of her shirt before she could overbalance. He dangled her feet first and then dropped her, so that she landed in a crouch on the forest floor.

'You go now,' he repeated, pointing the arrow at her as she scrambled to her feet. He was high above her on the branch now; she had to crane her head to look at him. 'Get out of the forest,' he said. 'Go.'

Baffled, Grace turned and began to run the way she had come. As she exited the clearing she looked back over her shoulder. Tsu'tey was still standing in the tree. Then, apparently satisfied that she was leaving, he scrambled onto a higher branch, leapt into the crown of a neighbouring tree and was gone.

She turned her face homewards and carried on running.

* * *

'Grace!'

The first person she saw when she entered the camp was Max, sprinting towards her with an oxygen mask strapped over his face. 'Where the _hell_ have you been?'

'I need to go put the avatar away,' she said, stalling for time.

'I'll meet you inside,' he answered, retreating towards the building.

Five minutes later, Grace exited the lab in her human form to find Norm waiting for her directly outside. Jake and Norm were just behind him, their faces pale and anxious.

'Where the hell have you been?' Max repeated. 'Did you just go out into the jungle on your own?'

'Yes,' Grace said, sweeping past him. 'As you would know if Norm had been listening to me when I told you.'

Max seized her elbow. '_Don't _try and blame this on us, Grace! You should know better than to go taking off by yourself like that.'

She sighed, turning to face him.

'Look, nothing happened –'

'Well it damn nearly did!' She had never seen Max so angry. 'Look at this screen! Just look!'

He pointed to a computer monitor which was showing a thermal read-out of the sector of forest she'd been travelling in.

'I check my cameras and I find that there's a huge thanator rampaging around out there!' Max shouted. 'And then Jake comes in and tells me that you're out on your own, headed for that _exact _area of the forest!'

'Max, are you trying to tell me that it's against the rules to go out in the forest on my own? Because believe it or not, I already know.' She turned to look at Jake. 'The jarhead gave me a recap on the regulations just this morning.'

'Well maybe you should listen to the jarhead! Maybe "_the jarhead_" hasn't got complacent!'

'Look, Max,' Grace said, more gently now, 'I'm sorry I worried you, and you're perfectly justified in your concern. But I've been here for a long time, and I know the jungle very well. It's not your job to be worrying about me –'

'No, you look, Grace,' Max interrupted. 'You may be my superior officially, but I've been working on this project for just as long as you have, and I know how dangerous it can be. So I'm telling you not to run off on your own like that again.' He was holding her shoulders now, looking into her eyes. Grace could feel the other two hanging on to every word, and suddenly she didn't feel angry or cantankerous any more. She felt oddly emotional.

'I get it, Max,' she said softly. 'I'll try and be sensible.'

'You had better,' he warned, and released her. Grace stood where she was for a moment as the activity of the lab resumed around her. Then she shook herself and walked over to her computer, bringing up some paperwork and preparing to buckle down.

But before she began work, she took a quick look at the thermal readouts that had been on Max's computer. They showed images of the fierce predator, stalking the jungle where she had been walking that morning. Was that what Tsu'tey had smelt, when he abruptly ordered her to leave?

Suddenly Grace was sure of it.

**A/N: DON'T just click favourite! DON'T just click alert! DON'T just review saying 'this was good please update!' Give me FEEDBACK, people! I want to know which bits you liked and why, and especially what you thought of the pairing.**

**Ladies and gentlemen, that is your specification. Thank you.**

**True and Essence.**

**PS. _Atokirina _are the seeds of the Tree of Souls. The grass or moss that I mentioned in this chapter is the grass which grows under the tree, which we see winding round Grace's body in the scene where they attempt to transfer her into her Avatar body. Because Tsu'tey says that both have 'very pure spirits', Grace thinks that there may be a link between them. All the stuff about how the grass is pollinated and the meaning of Tsu'tey's name, I made up myself. **

**Oh, and I now know that the predator Jake runs from on his first trip is a thanator, so I changed that. Anyway, it was dangerous for Grace to be in the forest with it.**


	3. Why did you Come?

**Chapter 3: 'Why did you Come?'**

**Disclaimer: **Does Parker own Pandora? No. Do we own Avatar? No.

**A/N: After a suggestion from a reader, speech in the Na'vi language is underlined. It's clumsy and annoying, I know, but I use italics for too many things. Thoughts, flashbacks, emphasis...it would get too confusing. So bear with me. It's a shame we can't use different fonts on FF.**

**Thanks to the reader – I think it was Snowflakes? – who suggested a meeting with more of Tsu'tey's POV. Dislodged a bunny-block nicely. And don't worry, I don't intend to ramble on in this Grace-and-Tsu'tey-meeting-in-the-woods vein forever. I figured one more chapter (this chapter) would do it, to set up the relationship.**

**Imagine chanting that in a 'sitting in a tree' rhythm. I'm not trying to imply anything about the fic (though there are enough trees), I just found it fun.**

**I think I may be drifting off on an insomnaic ramble. Do you like my cool adjective? And I have an exam tomorrow as well. Enjoy.**

'Tsu'tey!'

Tsu'tey looked up from the skinning knife he'd been whetting, sitting cross-legged with his back against a pillar of Hometree. The call had come from one of his fellow warriors, returning with a hunting party from the forest, and Tsu'tey noted with satisfaction that they had made a kill: a large _Yeric_was lashed to a pole and balanced on the shoulders of the hunters. He hurried over and helped them to set it down beneath the wooden frames where meat was hung to cure.

He knew that his brothers would have performed the correct rites, but he muttered a quick prayer of his own before setting to work. No discussion was necessary; he and his three friends had had plenty of practice at doing this task together. They each took a corner, scoring the _Yeric's_ skin up the legs and beneath the body and beginning to ease it away. It was a fiddly business, but he was almost through with it when the shouting erupted on the other side of the tree.

'_Doctor_Grace, _Doctor_Grace!'

Tsu'tey jumped violently and the knife jerked, putting a gash a hand's-breadth wide into the skin. Ignoring the slip, he twisted round to watch as a gaggle of children sprinted across the tree to fling themselves into the arms of an approaching woman.

A woman who looked like them, but who dressed in Sky clothes.

'Watch what you're doing, _skxawng_!' one of his friends called, rapping him across his knuckles. Tsu'tey administered a quelling glare to put the warrior back in his place, and then muttered by way of an excuse:

'Damn kids.'

'Ha,' one of the others remarked with a humourless grin. 'Allow one snake in and soon enough the whole nest turns up.'

Tsu'tey didn't reply, scraping fat off his section of the skin with unusual ferocity. His annoyance didn't feel quite like the united anger he usually felt when one of his friends insulted the Sky people. Probably he had let the arrival of the Dreamwalker tip him into one of those moods where every innocent speech seemed aggravating.

He hunched over his work, scraping with angry concentration while the greetings of the children and their old teacher floated across the tree. He had kept well clear of the 'school' himself, but apparently some of the younger ones had positively enjoyed it.

'Hello, Ja'ho...I see you, Natiel...' the Dreamwalker was saying, in a voice quite unlike any he had heard her use before. 'Tanhi, how you've grown! Ouch! Stop pulling my hair!'

'I'm sorry, _Doctor_Grace,' a girl's voice said in English. Tsu'tey ground his teeth at the foreign words. 'Your beads are so pretty.'

'Your English is improving.' The Dreamwalker's voice came again, saturated with approval. _It must be very satisfying, dragging them away from their own culture,_ he thought angrily, though it didn't square with the fluency of her own Na'vi...he briefly recalled the eager, learning light that had filled her eyes as he explained about the _riti_ fly, and then jabbed his knife into the haunch of the _yeric_ and began to hack it in two.

'And who is this?' the Dreamwalker asked.

Tsu'tey sneaked a second glance over his shoulder. She was standing in the middle of the group of children, one girl balanced on her hip, bending down to speak to the small boy named Ja'ho. They all looked so easy and happy that he carried on watching, his anger fading for a moment.

Ja'ho was carrying a baby a few months old, holding the infant with older-brotherly importance, even though it was nearly too heavy for him. Tsu'tey could remember himself at that age, hanging on to Neytiri's hand as she scrambled about the lower branches of Hometree, leading her through the paths of the jungle and boosting her onto her first horse...and for what? She'd grown away from him, running about the forest on her own and seeming to care more for that blundering Dreamwalker than for the whole clan...than for him.

Ja'ho was grabbing his baby brother under the arms, hefting him up for _Doctor_Grace's inspection, handling him with clumsy care.

'Look!' he announced, his voice carrying clearly across the empty space. 'This is my new baby brother! Come on, Taylu, say hello to _Doctor_Grace!'

Tsu'tey tensed as the child was placed into her arms, but he knew deep down that he was being foolish. The Dreamwalker meant no harm; it was clear in the way her arms wrapped securely round the baby, in her smile, in the way her eyes softened.

'OW!' she shrieked. The cry shocked him into a fighting crouch, twisted towards the source of the sound, knife held at the ready. _Doctor_Grace was holding the baby away from her now, and she was glaring.

'Little brat pulled my hair!' he heard her mutter.

'Stop twitching around, Tsu'tey,' one of his friends complained. 'It's not restful. If you object to her presence so much, just go and shoot her.'

'I am going to speak with her now,' Tsu'tey said stiffly, standing. The others nodded, bending back to their work, but he suspected that his words hadn't had quite the mystical ring he'd intended. Most of them could claim to have 'spoken with' a Dreamwalker before, after all.

Turning towards the group on the far side of the tree, he paused and stared down at his hands. The creases in his skin were stained with blood, and one still grasped the knife. What would Grace think when she saw them? Dreamwalkers' hands were always so clean; they had machines for this kind of work, and for a moment he felt almost ashamed at his appearance. Then the feeling turned to disgust. _They work more cleanly than us,_ he thought, _but they have blood on their hands that no water will wash away, and they don't even see it._ The anger propelled him into motion, and he began to walk towards the children.

'What did you say you call him?' Grace asked as he approached. 'Teylu? In English, does that not mean _beetle larva?_'

One of the other children, Natiel, burst out laughing. 'No, no, _Doctor_Grace!' she said. 'This is just what they call him for to make joke. He is _Tirea-Riti,_ spirit of the _riti_ fly.'

'You know,' a girl named Tanhì added helpfully. 'They drink from the –'

Ja'ho stood on her foot.

'Ow! Why shouldn't I tell her?' she howled indignantly.

'Tsu'tey says we must not tell Dreamwalkers –'

'The _riti_ fly_,_' Grace interrupted, gently pushing the two apart before their quarrel could escalate. 'They drink from the flowers of the groundmoss, is that not so? And they are very hard to catch_._'

Tsu'tey shifted uncomfortably; Grace hadn't mentioned that he had been the one to tell her, but she might do at any moment. He would lose a lot of respect from the children if he didn't practise what he preached. He started to walk faster, stepping from branch to branch, automatically choosing the ways he knew to be best.

'Yes, that's right,' Natiel said, while Tanhì smirked smugly at her brother. 'They're very special animals. And fast, like you said. The only people who bother to try and catch them are the warriors, when they are trying to impress their women.'

'That's not true!' Ja'ho interrupted. 'I can catch _riti _easily!'

'Yes_,_' Natiel giggled. _'_And you only do it to impress me_._'

Grace handed baby _Tirea_ back to Ja'ho before he could launch himself at Natiel. 'So...' she said slowly, 'let me get this straight. You named him after a bug?'

'No, _skxawng_!' Tanhì shouted. 'After the spirit that follows him!'

Grace grinned. 'So I'm _skxawng_, am I, you disrespectful child? Well, skxwang to you too, twice!'

Tsu'tey was astonished at her light retort. He would never have let one of those brats, or any adult, get away with talking to him like that –

_She respects us, _he thought suddenly. _She admires all of us, even the children... _

'Three times!'

'Four times!'

'Five times!' Tanhì delivered the phrase with a triumphant ring and jumped into the lower branches of home-tree, directly below where Tsu'tey stood. He stepped backwards and peered down at the spectacle beneath him.

'I'm going to get you!' Grace shouted, running after her. Tanhì squealed and grabbed the next branch while the other children clustered around to watch the fun. Grace scrambled up after the Na'vi girl, her head craned to watch her progress.

'Tanhì, come down from there now,' she called as the girl mounted even higher.

'No, it's fun!'

'I said _come down_. You might fall.'

'Na'vi don't fall out of trees!_'_ Tanhì declared, dangling by her knees. Tsu'tey watched Grace's face tighten with maternal concern.

'There's a first time for everything. Now come down or –'

'Or wha – '

Tsu'tey vaulted silently onto a wide branch between him and the girl, reached down and plucked her easily into the air.

HELP!'

Grace looked up in shock, which quickly turned to relief as she realized that Tanhì hadn't fallen. Tsu'tey grinned, dangling the shocked girl by her ankles.

'You should be obedient,__Tanhì, even to a Dreamwalker,' he said warningly. She gulped.

Tsu'tey heard a gasp from below and looked down. Grace had recognized him, then, even from this distance. He sighed, adjusted his grip on Tanhì and began to descend, jumping from branch to branch with a speed that came from many years of practise. He brushed past her, dropped to the ground and deposited Tanhì among her friends.

'Clear off now,' he instructed, 'and take this little _skxawng_ with you. The Dreamwalker and I are going to talk.'

Behind him, Grace swallowed. A talk? The children watched him with wide-eyed respect, clustering together and then vanishing behind a column of the tree. Tsu'tey watched them out of sight and then turned back towards her.

He had obviously been hunting, or something of the kind. A bloodstained knife was very evident in his hand. He stuck it into his belt, pulled out a square of cloth and began to wipe his hands, walking towards her.

'So,' he said, stepping past her and swinging himself onto a branch, 'you too come to Hometree now, Dreamwalker.'

'I was invited here by Eytukan,' Grace replied, no hint of apology in her voice.

'And _Jakesully_ asked him for the favour,' Tsu'tey said flatly, shaking the cloth out with a sharp _snap_ and tucking it back into his belt.

'I used to come here often to teach the children.'

'True,' he conceded, 'and the children seem pleased to see you. But then the Sky people made war on us.'

'That wasn't my decision.'

'You are one of the Sky people, Dreamwalker,' Tsu'tey said softly. 'Do not forget it.'

Something hard flashed in Grace's eyes.

'Is that why you came over here?' she demanded. 'To complain at me about what I can't control? As long as Eytukan welcomes me here I'm coming; the only way we're ever going to make peace is by talking to each other. So you might as well accept it.'

She turned her back on him, her shoulders set in an angry hunch. Tsu'tey watched her for a moment, surprised by the outburst. So far she had never shown any fear, but apart from that her behaviour had been designed to placate him, to keep him answering questions. So far he had judged that the answers, for some unknown reason, were the most important thing to her, but now it seemed that she didn't care about making him angry either. She was an enigma to him, completely unfathomable. And now he found that he had questions of his own.

'Why did you come here, Dreamwalker?' he asked, in a tone intended to pacify her.

'You know why we're here,' she said wearily. 'There's a substance in the ground here that helps power our machines, and the Sky people want it.'

'But why did _you_ come here?' He looked frustrated, Grace thought, as though he thought he might not be phrasing his question right. But the truth was that there was nothing wrong with his English. She had deliberately dodged.

'I came to learn,' she said softly. 'I came to study the trees. ...I did my PHD –'

'What is a PHD?' Tsu'tey interrupted.

'Sorry. It's...like a test you have to do to become a scientist, the same way you have to tame an _ikran_ to become a hunter. You study something in detail, and write down the information, and your teacher reads it and decides whether you understand your subject well enough...it's probably difficult for you to understand, but anyway, it was a test and I had to do it.

'So I travelled to a place called Brazil on my planet, to do my PHD on the rainforests there. They're quite similar to the environment here in some ways; lots of rain, tangled growth, thousands of different species. But they were so small. There's only a few square miles of reservation left now, and it had all been studied so many times before...so when I heard of Pandora...of this place, here, I knew I had to come. I worked so hard, right from when I was sixteen – barely more than a child, in the years of the People – when you get to choose what you want to study. When we're that age, we're all taught in schools like the one I used to have here, and after that you can go to a bigger school called university where you can learn in more detail. Most people take a year's break between the two, but I went straight on. I wanted to get out here...I completed my PHD in two Earth years, instead of three, and then after I'd been doing work on Earth for about five years, I qualified to travel to Pandora.'

Tsu'tey eyed her in perplexity as she spoke, her eyes far away. Achieving early he could understand – he himself had bonded with his _ikran_ at the age of sixteen, younger than any of his fellow warriors – but to do it in the name of science, this mysterious art or belief which seemed to gainsay Ey'wa at every turn..._that_ he could not understand. These scientists seemed determined to shred apart everything around them, they did not put their trust in Ey'wa to provide, they always had to know _how..._

And yet there was a kind of unending innocence in this Dreamwalker. He constantly interpreted the forest around him; it was both his ally and the ally of his enemies. But she seemed only to look in wonder. Maybe it was the same for her as it was for him; to study everything she saw was second nature. And to her, the forest was beautiful. That much they had in common.

'I remember,' Grace was saying, 'waking up on the shuttle, and looking out at this moon for the first time. Seeing it all there spread out below me. The troopers call it hell, but to me it looked like paradise.'

'You speak of looking _out_ at the moon,' Tsu'tey said, his tone argumentative out of habit more than anything else, 'but when we look at the sky, we look _up. _You speak of this _gravity_ –'

'This world is a ball,' Grace broke in, 'round like a fruit. Gravity pulls you towards its centre, and the direction of gravity's pull always feels like down.'

'So you say, but it looks flat to me –'

'It's round,' Grace said bluntly. 'I've travelled around it in space and I've seen it.' She sighed, then continued in a gentler tone. 'I know it's hard to believe. On my planet you get taught all your life that the world is a round ball hanging in a void, and when you look down at it from the outside for the first time you still can't believe it. You can't believe that that's the place where you – your entire _race_ – live, and that it's so small.'

She sighed and leaned back against the trunk of the tree, her eyes, with their strange tinge of green, far away. Tsu'tey was struck by how much those eyes must have seen. She was as clumsy as any of the Sky people, and yet she knew things about his forest that he had never understood or even questioned in the first place. And she had lived on another world. Travelled further than the highest peaks of the mountains or the longest marches of the plains.

'How long were you flying between the worlds?' he asked. She seemed not to hear for a moment, then shook herself and answered:

'Ummmm...in your time? About seven years.'

'Seven years just floating?'

'Seven years asleep. You do age, but not as fast as if you were awake the entire time. Besides, they couldn't carry enough air to sustain all the passengers awake.'

He was astonished by the cool way she spoke of such things. She had set off when he was only a boy; even if she were to leave tonight, he would be a seasoned warrior by the time she completed her journey. 'But what of your family?' he demanded. 'Your home? You are so far away...'

Grace gave a short laugh. 'My home isn't much worth missing,' she said. 'That's the reason we're here. And as for my family –'

'_Doctor_Grace, _Doctor_Grace!' Tanhì cried, appearing suddenly and clutching at Grace's arm. The other children clustered behind her. 'Do you know what –'

'_Sxka!_' Tsu'tey cried, leaping down from the branch. They scattered away from his snarl with squeals of playful terror, vanishing amid the columns once more.

'Those children wanted to talk to me,' Grace said rather indignantly as he turned back towards her.

'I am talking to you,' he answered shortly, springing back up beside her. 'Well? You were speaking of your family?'

'Well, I had no brothers or sisters, and my parents...they didn't really understand the way I felt about my studies...my father thought that science was for boys...' She was speaking quickly, her words tumbling out with her thoughts; it was all Tsu'tey could do to keep up. He realised suddenly how clearly she usually spoke around the Na'vi, her sentences carefully chosen to be short and to the point. Another proof or her respect.

Grace was still talking. '...I do miss them, of course, but coming here...it was the only choice I could make. I don't regret it.' She smiled wistfully, watching the children playing on the other side of the tree. 'I do wish I'd had some kids, though.'

Tsu'tey rocked gently backwards and forwards, wondering why she was telling him this, why she spoke as though it was never going to happen, why she spoke as though it _could_ not happen, when to him it seemed like a natural stage of life...a woman could be a hunter or a warrior, or in the Sky world a _scientist_, if she wished, but at some stage she would also find a mate. He shook his head. The Sky people made everything so complicated, and more often than not so miserable.

But Grace didn't seem to be dwelling on it. She gave a shake of her head, as though dispelling the thoughts, and then turned to him with a smile on her face.

'Come on,' she said. 'I'll show you something.'

She stood up and pulled herself up onto the next branch, beginning to ascend into the canopy of the tree. Tsu'tey rose, taken aback. What could she possibly have to show him out here in the forest? And what business had she telling him to follow her in his own home? He swung past her, easily taking the lead, then paused a few branches up to ask:

'Where are we going?'

She grinned, as though she had guessed his thoughts as he overtook her. 'Up. Right to the top.'

He nodded once and began to climb quickly, hoisting himself up the familiar routes with barely a pause. He could hear the sounds of her more laborious ascent below, falling gradually further behind.

'This is something I taught the children once, but I couldn't demonstrate it properly on the forest floor,' she called, perhaps hoping that he would slow down if she drew him into conversation.

'You never did come to my school.'

'No,' he said shortly, but the snappy response felt wrong, somehow, and he found himself trying to moderate it with flimsy excuses before he fully realised what he was saying. 'I was too old for it to be convenient. Most of those who went were children, but I was already training to become a hunter...'

He trailed off with a grimace and kept climbing.

Grace carried on doggedly below him, pushing him up into the very top of the canopy, where the branches were supple and bent beneath his weight. It wouldn't have been enough to make him nervous had he been on his own, but with the Dreamwalker flailing around to distract him who knew what slips he might make?

She reached his branch and began to edge out past him, inching along to where the leaves parted to show slivers of sky. The branch bowed gently beneath her; one false move would be enough to make it lurch and drop, sending her plummeting down.

'Be careful, Dreamwalker,' he called. 'It's a long way down if you slip.'

'I know.' He voice came through clenched teeth as she squatted, finding her balance. She pulled aside a fistful of twigs and gestured to him. 'Come on.'

Picking his way among the branches he joined her, pushing aside more leaves to expose a view of the jungle. Hometree was taller than anything else for miles around, and they could see the canopy stretching away beneath them. Unbroken to the horizon...until a few years ago. From the other side of the tree, one could see the cuts made by the Sky people, vivid orange gashes in the green. Tiny scars, but growing.

'I see the canopy, Dreamwalker,' he observed. 'What else?'

She was rummaging in her pockets. 'I told you that the world was round,' she said, 'and you were having trouble believing in it. But if you look out to the horizon, you can see...' She pulled out a hard, straight object, marked with short black lines at regular intervals, and held it up. 'It doesn't work terribly well up here, there's too many trees and they break up the skyline...we'd have to go out to the plains to see it properly...' She held the object up against the line where trees met sky, and motioned him to look across it as she did. 'Well? What do you notice?'

He touched her instrument. 'What is this –'

'You're missing the point!' she said irritably, slapping his hand away. 'Look, we hold the ruler...parallel to the horizon, or what _would_ be parallel if the horizon were a straight line, and what do we see? _Curvature._'

'Cur-vat-ure?' he echoed uncertainly.

'The horizon is curved!' she exclaimed. There was a light in her eyes; they were wide and brilliant as she gazed at him. 'The horizon is curved, which proves that this world is a sphere! Look.' She fumbled for one of the beads that ornamented her hair. 'You can see the same thing here, only much smaller, because it's a smaller sphere. The edge – I know spheres don't have edges, but in silhouette... silhouette, the edge is curved.'

He took the bead between finger and thumb, bending to examine it closely. He could sense her eagerness as she waited for him to reply to her explanation...

'What is this thing made from?'

'Will you stop! Changing! The subject!' she shouted, gesticulating furiously as she glared at him. She seemed to have completely forgotten that they were hundreds of feet up in a windblown tree, and that he was one of the Omaticayas' finest warriors and carrying a butcher knife in his belt. He felt a spurt of frank admiration, and it spurred him to take the straight instrument from her, hold it up to the horizon once more, and examine the two lines. And he saw that the horizon was definitely curved.

'You are right about this I suppose, Dreamwalker,' he murmured. 'The world does seem to be round.'

Her smile was radiant. 'I know,' she said in Na'vi. 'It is wonderful when you find that something can be proved just by looking –'

There was a shout and clatter of approaching riders below. Grace looked down suddenly, her weight shifted, and the branch gave a sudden dip.

'Ow, you're crushing me, get off!' she protested. She'd barely felt the bounce. The moment the branch had started to give he'd seized her from behind.

'You are falling, _skxawng_. Now be still, it is not stable here.'

'I was not falling, I was fine!'

'Falling.'

'Fine.'

'Falling.'

'_Fine,_ I was falling.'

'Huh?' He turned her round to face him, frowning in confusion. 'You talk no sense. Do you say you were falling, or do you still say that you are _fine?_'

She rolled her eyes. 'Sorry. What I meant was, "_very well, I was falling."_'

'I see.' He peered down between the branches. 'Ha. It is_ skxawng Jakesully_ with Neytiri, back from hunting.' He sighed. 'They will have come back with nothing, again.'

'I wouldn't be so sure of that.' Tsu'tey's fingers flexed tensely over her shoulders as she looked down as well. 'Yes, they've definitely got something.' She grinned, that learning light back in her eyes again. 'What do you know, that jarhead's really coming on.'

She was speaking incomprehensible English now, the kind where meanings distorted and phrases were harder to unravel. She shuffled round on the branch and began to scramble down, quickly disappearing among the thick leaves. He could hear her calling with typical Sky abandon as she went lower.

'Jake! Up here, marine!'

He made to follow, then changed his mind and went up instead. His ears caught murmurs of speech drifting up from below, but he ignored them, pulling himself up hand over hand until he was higher than the Dreamwalker would ever have thought of climbing, higher than even some of the Na'vi would dare to go, perching in the very crown of the tree where the uppermost branches swayed beneath the open sky.

**A/N: And with a poetic flourish, I conclude. This sort of thing is very True Colours.**

**I'm afraid this chapter was not as good as the last two. I was experimenting with Tsu'tey's POV and Grace's explanations and the characterisation may have slipped. But hey, I updated, why are you complaining? Feel happy now.**

**Next chapter will probably be a humorous one with more input from Essence of Gold.**

**True**


	4. Or Is It?

**Chapter 4: 'Or **_**Is **_**It?'**

**Disclaimer: **I don't own Avatar.

**A/N: This chapter is put together from bits and pieces that I wrote down a while back, during the gestation period, so I'm not sure how well it flows. But it moves the story on, I think, and that's the main thing.**

'Hey, team, I've just received the response to our relocation request from Management,' Max called, plucking a printed-out email off the printer. 'It seems that they've finally finished chewing it through and sent us a verdict –'

'Well, don't keep us in suspense!' Grace came striding across the lab, her red curls bouncing. 'What is this, an amateur theatrics society? Gimme that.' She whipped the sheet out of his hand and stared at it for a few seconds, her lips pursed. Then her face broke into a smile. 'Well, they say we can go, everybody! How does that sound? A few weeks on our own in an outpost without the miners and jarheads breathing down our necks?' Grace knew how to raise a cheer when she wanted one. The group responded enthusiastically.

'Well, except for you, Jake,' she amended, turning to address the marine who was sitting behind her. 'How does a trip out sound?'

'Great,' he said, with one of his reserved but sincere soldierly smiles. '...where are we going?'

Grace didn't know whether to laugh or cry. Sometimes his cluelessness was unbelievable.

'To the Hallelujah mountains,' Norm chimed in. Thank God for Norm. The PhD had the patience of an angel.

'You know,' he said, when Jake looked blank. 'The famous floating mountains? On the North side? Come on, you must have heard of them?'

'Oh yeah.' Jake fumbled for his "manual", flipped through it and presented a photograph. 'Those famous floating mountains?'

'Yup,' Norm nodded. 'Those are the ones.'

'And do you happen to know _why _we are decamping to the Hallelujah mountains? Or the _Iknimaya_, to use the Na'vi?' Grace had finished perusing the email in more detail and had rejoined the conversation. Her eyes pinned Jake down with a little more humor than had been evident at their first meeting, but it was still a pretty scary expression.

Jake gulped. 'Um...no?'

'We are making the trip because it happens, conveniently, to be the site of the last task in your Na'vi training. They provide prime nesting grounds for _ikran._ The RDA consider it..._important_ that you complete the training, and so they've agreed to let me take the team out there and given us a research permit so that we can get on with some studying while you're about it.' She eyed Jake for a moment and then said softly:

'Try not to walk around with your eyes closed, jarhead, you'll run into things.' Tapping him lightly on the head with the printout, she headed off in the direction of her desk.

Jake wheeled himself away, and Norm followed him. At the door they both paused as Trudy came hurrying past them with an armful of kit.

'Thanks,' she nodded as they scooted to either side to let her pass.

'No problem. Hey, are you flying us there?' Jake called after her.

Trudy looked back with a grin. 'Yup. Hallelujah mountains. Floating rocks and gravity fields screwing with my instruments. All good fun.'

As she dumped her equipment Jake and Norm continued to loiter by the door. Without discussion both their eyes turned to Grace, watching the scientist musingly. She was standing by her desk, one hand resting on the back of her chair, still reading the email closely with her eyebrows knitted.

'She's worried, you know,' Norm murmured so that only Jake could here. 'All this talk about research and diplomacy, understanding the indigenous...well, maybe it was all serious once, but the mining suits are just stringing us along now. They'll give us our permits to keep us quiet, pretend like we're a serious part of what they're doing here, but the truth is that they're totally driven by the mining industry now. The whole thing's just waiting to blow up, and when it does there'll be nothing Grace can do to stop them from taking what they want.' Norm dropped his voice even lower. 'Jake, she's counting on you. She's counting on you to gain the trust of the Na'vi, because what it boils to is that she's a scientist and you're a soldier. Quaritch respects you. Maybe, when the time comes, he'll listen to you.'

Jake nodded slowly. This was the closest anyone had come to mentioning his connection with the colonel. He suspected from Grace's words that she knew too, but...

Things were getting complicated.

Grace, meanwhile, was still staring at the email, but her thoughts were wandering. The RDA, the Na'vi, Hometree...all of it was just waiting to blow up, but she knew that she couldn't solve that by worrying, and her mind was on smaller matters. Up in the Hallelujah mountains they would be farther from Hometree. She wouldn't be able to visit so often...wouldn't see the kids for days on end. She knew she would miss wandering the familiar forest tracks which, foolishly, had begun to feel almost like her home, where there was always the chance, however slim, of running into a familiar face...

'...not positively looking forward to it,' she heard Norm say from the other side of the lab.

'Well, you could say that, I suppose,' Jake replied. 'I mean, nobody really looks forward to climbing up crumbling piles of floating rocks, no matter how much they boast in the mess hall.'

'Or wrestling with sort of pterodactyl-critters at the end of it,' Trudy put in, leaning against a bench top. Grace had been glad to hear that she would be flying them; the pilot struck her as more decent than most. She would be staying with them too.

'Or that either,' Jake agreed. 'Oh, and did I mention that Tsu'tey is gonna be our guide and safety instructor in this?'

'Wow, are you ever going to have a good day tomorrow,' Trudy whistled, while Grace whipped round and began busying herself with stacking papers without quite knowing why. So, that was one Na'vi they wouldn't be leaving behind. Tsu'tey was coming as well.

Poor Jake.

* * *

Today they were due to set off on their trip to tame banshees in the Hallelujah mountains. His human comrades were already installed in the mobile unit, and Jake and the other initiate warriors had spent the previous day on a long and gruelling hike out to their starting point. But was that any excuse to take it easy? Not according to Neytiri, it wasn't.

Jake drew his bow and took aim at the target which she had daubed in berry juice on the bark of a tree. Then he lowered it again and adjusted his grip on the arrow. He began to bring it back up to his shoulder, but stopped. He adjusted his footing, flicking his tail slightly to assess his balance. He heard Neytiri begin to tap her foot significantly.

Fine, he was stalling. But with good reason.

Shooting was difficult enough in itself, but doing it with Neytiri watching his every move and her psychotic brother breathing down his neck was even worse. Jake's stomach was churning with nerves. Just yesterday he had watched Tsu'tey doing similar training with a group of other young warriors. He had shot a succession of arrows straight into the target, drawing them so fast that his hands had seemed blurred. None of the other Na'vi had been able to match him. And now Jake knew that Tsu'tey was just waiting to take his turn and blow him out of the water. He pulled the string tight again, turned the bow a little to the left and then a little to the right, screwing up one eye to try and see better –

'Skxawng!' A loud voice shrieked in his ear and a hand smacked into his shoulder. Jake jumped about a foot in the air, lost his grip on the bowstring and sent the arrow shooting into the ground an inch from his toe.

'Never, _never _close your eyesto hunt,' Neytiri scolded him. '_Open!_ Aim more quickly. And grip the bow like _this_, not like that. It is a tool, not a delicate toy!'

'Alright, alright!' Jake exclaimed. Hardly caring what he was doing, he whipped the bow up and fired.

The arrow thudded into the dead centre of the target.

'Good, good!' Neytiri encouraged, while Jake gaped open-mouthed. She seemed genuinely happy to see him making progress, but then again, who really enjoyed beating their head against a brick wall?

'Tsu'tey's turn,' she said.

Tsu'tey stepped forward, resisting the urge to barge the dreamwalker as he did so. He stood for a moment, poised on the balls of his feet, finding his balance. Then in one blindingly fast motion Tsu'tey whipped an arrow from quiver to string and let it fly.

'Show-off,'Jake said under his breath. Neytiri glanced side-long at him, half chiding, half amused.

As Tsu'tey aimed, he felt his fingers brush over a slight scoop or indent in the shaft, but he was moving too fast to adjust. He felt it slip in his hands and go shooting away at the wrong angle. There was a thump as it hit the tree.

Jake blinked. Tsu'tey's arrow was out from his by nearly an inch.

Tsu'tey stood where he was, cursing silently and fluently. By sheer bad luck, he had managed to draw the arrow that he had been working on as he talked to the female dreamwalker. He recalled that he'd taken a lot more than he should have done off the shaft as they talked – he hadn't been paying enough attention to what he was doing... But he could hardly explain that to the other two without sounding as though he were making excuses, and besides, what kind of a fool whittled his arrows too thin?

'That was a good try, Tsu'tey,' Neytiri said finally.

Tsu'tey resisted the urge to go and kill something, preferably Jake.

'We will practise again, Jake,' she said, walking to the tree to retrieve the arrows. She plucked Tsu'tey's down and examined it closely. 'Hmm. I think this one is a little...uneven?'

'I must have pared it too thin,' Tsu'tey said tightly.

'Something else on your mind, huh?' Jake muttered behind him.

Tsu'tey spun round and seized him by the throat.

Neytiri shrieked, leaping forward and elbowing him in the abdomen. Then she whirled around to Jake.

'What did you say to him?'

Tsu'tey, who had doubled up in the excruciating pain that came with a jab in the pressure point, straightened up and hissed: 'That... _dim-witted _pupil of yours needs to be taught some manners!' He hadn't missed the fact that, though she was trying to conceal it with anger now, Neytiri had rushed to help the Dreamwalker unhesitatingly.

'I did not see him do anything terrible!' she said now. 'Jake, what did you say?'

'I just asked if he had something on his mind!' Jake huffed, picking himself up. 'I was only joking!'

'There, you see?' Neytiri nodded, as though that settled the matter. Tsu'tey suppressed a snarl, caught her by the shoulder and began to speak in Na'vi.

'He has no right to be here! And now he's being rude and muttering insults behind my back! You are being too soft on him!'

Neytiri's eyes flashed. 'Maybe you should learn to control your temper before starting on about _his_ faults!' Tsu'tey noticed she had dodged his accusation about her training methods.

'Well, maybe you should stop being so gentle with your Dreamwalker and teach him some discipline! Or perhaps you're becoming too fond of - '

Neytiri shrieked wordlessly, stepping forward and smacking her brother in the chest. He noticed her cheeks had turned slightly pink. 'Well, maybe, uh – you should focus on whittling your arrows properly rather than staring dreamily off at – well, whatever you were staring at!'

Tsu'tey snarled. 'What makes you think I was staring at anything? Just because you are an initiated warrior now, it doesn't give you the right to be disrespectful to your elders!'

'I don't see that I was disrespectful – unless I somehow hit a nerve_?_'

'Shut up, little sister!'

'So I did hit a nerve! What were you finding so distracting, then?'

'Nothing, you_*!&**!_'

'How dare you speak to me like that, you _*!#$*&*-ing __–_ '

'Erm, guys?' Jake said tentatively. Neytiri's last sentence contained a couple of words that he hadn't heard since the time he had accidentally dropped his bowl of hot soup on a Na'vi's tail several weeks ago. Maybe it would be best to intervene before it became an all-out sibling row. 'Maybe you should – '

'_Fnu!_' 'Shut up!' both of them shouted at him, and he took a step backward. Then Neytiri sighed, and with a great effort, composed herself.

'Jake, I think we should go and train elsewhere,' she said haughtily, collecting up her things. Jake stayed where he was, watching Tsu'tey warily. The tall male looked pretty murderous.

'Well? _Eltu si, __skxawng_!' Neytiri snapped turning away from her brother. Jake quickly gathered up his things and followed her.

Left on his own, Tsu'tey began to stalk menacingly around the camp, checking their preparations and snapping at any warrior who got in his way. The mountains floated above him, decking in their swirling throngs of _ikran. _His best hope was that Jakesully would get knocked over the edge in the struggle...which, with Neytiri watching his every move, was looking more and more unlikely.

* * *

'Grace?'

'_What?!?_' Grace whipped round from the specimen she'd been studying, her face set in a snarl that would have been terrifying even by Na'vi standards.

'Sorry!' Norm exclaimed, taking a step backwards. 'I only wanted to ask if you wanted any coffee.'

'Oh. Right. Sorry.' Grace bowed her head, rubbing her fingers wearily into her temples. 'Yeah, please. Coffee would be great.'

'OK,' Norm whispered, and backed slowly out of the room as though she were some kind of tyrannical monarch.

Grace checked her watch for the umpteenth time that day. The mission should have been completed by now; Jake would either be the proud owner of an _ikran,_ or a bloody mess on the rocks beneath the Hallelujah mountains. She knew that if it was the latter he would probably have woken up gasping and choking by now, and they would have no worse consequences to contend with than the loss of a very expensive avatar...but all the same, she couldn't forget the time when one of her team had been so badly injured while in link that his human body had gone into shock and never woken up. They'd improved the link beds since then, with dozens of safeties to allow the driver to disconnect in an instant, but still...

She sighed, pushed her microscope away and headed into the link room. This dismal little journey was beginning to become painfully familiar as she checked on him again and again. She should just get a grip on herself, accept that worrying wasn't going to change anything and get down to some useful work. But she couldn't.

Jake's face on the screen didn't look particularly dead. His eyes were flickering rapidly like a REM sleeper's, and she wondered what he was seeing in his avatar body. For goodness' sake, he should have been back by now. How long did it take to catch yourself a banshee? Probably he was just being really, really picky, trying to find himself a mount that could take on an RDA helicopter...

She turned to stare at her own link bed. What was she planning on doing? Heading out there to look for him herself? Stupid and unnecessary. But maybe a spin in the avatar would help to clear her head –

'Grace!'

She whirled around with a yell as the lid of Jake's link bed crashed back to reveal the man himself, sitting up, eyes bright.

'What the hell...?' was all she managed, clutching at her chest in shock.

'Oh my God, that was the biggest rush _ever!_' Jake cried, hoisting himself into his wheelchair. 'I was like, "_shut up and fly straight,_" and it flew straight, and –'

'Aww, crap,' Grace groaned, flopping onto her link bed and burying her face in her hands.

'And we were flying right in among the tightest bits of the mountains, I just had to _think _and it acted, and...Grace? Are you OK?'

'Yeah,' she muttered. 'Stressful day, that's all. _And you are just completely not bothered. _'Guess I'd better tell the others you're back.'

'Yeah.' Jake wheeled closer. 'Are you sure your OK?'

He was kind of sweet, in a completely emotionally clueless way. 'Sure, Jarhead, I'm fine,' she said.

'Oh good.' Jake turned and began to wheel towards the door. 'I'm just going to go outside for a breath of fresh air, then.'

'Uh, Jake?' she called, leaning out of the link room after him. 'You do realise you'll suffocate if you try to breath the air, right?'

'It's an expression, Doctor,' he replied, rolling into the airlock. 'Hmm, Tsu'tey didn't seem too happy about the fact that I survived. D'you reckon he –' The closing door cut off his words.

Grace shook her head, stared after him for a moment, and then went back to her samples.

* * *

Tsu'tey carefully tied the binding between two sticks and sat back on his heels to admire his handiwork. When it was done it would be a wonderful trap, right in the path the Sky people took to fetch their water, and completely invisible.

He knew this was probably unwise, but what did it matter? For the past weeks he had been tolerating the Sky people, behaving like his sister or the youngest of the children, who never linked their beloved teacher to the destruction of the forest. But they were enemies, it was time to begin treating them as such once more. Jakesully's success was the final straw. He was in the mood for revenge.

'What exactly are you doing?'

And abrasive voice cut through his thoughts, and a foot came down sharply on his trap – which, in its incomplete state, was no good for trapping anything. He looked up to find himself face to face with the female dreamwalker, who was giving him a look that would have made _Palalukan_ turn tail and run.

'Nothing,' he said, and then began mentally kicking himself.

'_Nothing?'_ the dreamwalker echoed. She was in her Sky form, and this combined with her belligerent stance had the unsettling effect of making her seem simultaneously very big and very small.

'Look,' she said, 'I know you think I'm unobservant, but did you really think I wouldn't notice you setting up a trap right outside my front door?'

There was no right answer to that, so Tsu'tey stayed silent.

'Get out,' Grace said, in a voice more weary than anything else, dropping her aggressive posture, 'and take your twigs with you.' She nudged at the trap with her foot, knocking the framework apart.

'Hey!' Tsu'tey yelled fiercely, leaping to his feet.

'Be reasonable,' Grace snapped back, unimpressed. 'I don't go around trapping you in the forest, so have the courtesy not to trap me here. Save it for the military.' She pointed in the direction of the army base.

Tsu'tey sneered.

'You couldn't trap me in the forest if you tried, Dreamwalker.'

Graced raised an eyebrow. 'Oh, couldn't I?'

'No!'

'Oh really?'

'No!'

'Oh really?'

'No!'

'This is a circular argument. I told you to go.

Tsu'tey backed away, glowering.

'I'm going.'

'Well go!'

'I'm going!'

Grace folded her arms and planted her feet. 'You're still here.'

'No I'm not.'

'Yes you are.'

'No I'm not.'

'Yes you are.'

'You're..._going_ somewhere with this?'

Both of them jumped, turning towards the new speaker. Jake was sitting in the path in front of them, and as they stared at him he began to shake with barely controlled laughter.

'What are you doing here, Jake?' Grace demanded, jerking her head so that her curls bounced.

'Well, I *was* going to go through the door, only you two are blocking it.

Grace looked and saw that they had indeed been conducting their argument across the entrance to the base. She raised her eyes to glare at Tsu'tey once more. He glared back.

'So, Jake called, interrupting their staring match, 'is he leaving now or are you going to ask him in to dinner?'

Grace lit a cigarette and slipped it daringly under her mask for a drag. 'Oh, he's definitely going,' she said, flicking a murderous glance at Tsu'tey.

He stepped forward and plucked the cigarette from between her fingers, leaning aggressively close. 'Be careful, dreamwalker,' he hissed. 'This time you are lucky, this time I let you go. Maybe next time I am not so generous.'

'Maybe next time I won't let you off so lightly,' Grace retorted. They scowled at one another, nose to nose and eye to eye.

'OoooooooOOOOOOOOOOHHHH!' Jake crowed.

Grace rounded on him. 'Jake, get inside, now!' she snapped, gesturing sharply at the door. He simply sat there and laughed.

Face tight with fury, Grace stomped over to him and seized the handles of his wheel chair.

'Hey!' Jake protested.

She ignored him, shoving him up the ramp towards the door. 'You,' she barked at Tsu'tey as she passed him. 'Go on. Leave.' He stood where he was for a moment and then began to melt back into the jungle, his expression mutinous.

'I'll see you in training tomorrow!' Jake yelled over his shoulder as he was wheeled into the base. Grace slammed her hand against the control to seal the doors and then spun him round to face her.

'You and I,' she said, 'are going to have a serious talk about how not to upset these people if you want to continue your assignment. Now go. Video log. Get out from under my feet.'

Jake scooted off into the computer room, calling out a greeting to Norm as he did so. Grace stared after him for a moment, shaking her head, then turned and made her way into the kitchen. He had talked one bit of sense during the exchange: it was indeed time for dinner.

She switched on their gas stove and began to throw together a quick meal, putting on some minute rice to simmer and cutting strips of pork and capsicum into a pan to fry. She made a thin gravy from half a stock cube dissolved in boiling water, tossed the whole lot together and carried it through on a plate to the computer room.

Jake was sitting in front of the camera, addressing it with the same awkward solemnity that he always brought to the task. Norm was perched on a desk top opposite him, facing the door. He held a notebook and pencil, but did not seem to be writing anything down. Grace tuned her ears to Jake's words.

'...swear she has a thing going for Tsu'tey, Neytiri's psychotic older brother. I mean, I know he's a good source of scientific information, but surely she can't be doing this purely in the name of science. She's off in the forest every day talking to him, she jumps whenever his name's mentioned...' Jake shifted his head very slightly, almost as though he were sneaking a glance over his shoulder. '...and he was here today, right outside the base. Oh, they _said _he was setting a trap, but it wouldn't surprise me if...'

Grace blinked. Norm was staring fixedly at her, his pencil poised to take notes.

'What are you boys doing?' she said sharply, setting her plate down and planting her hands on her hips.

Jake gave a theatrical jump and twisted round as though he'd only just noticed her. Norm bent over his pad and began to scribble furiously, muttering as he wrote.

'_Reaction: irritable, accusing. Shifting blame? Expression guilty...'_

'I do _not_ look guilty!' Grace exclaimed hotly.

' "_Methinks the lady doth protest too much," ' _Norm continued. '_Consider relevance of quote to G's reaction.'_

'What are you talking about?'

'Oh, I think you know.' Jake spun round to face her. All his gravity had vanished; he was grinning from ear to ear. 'Squabbling like an old married couple, you were. I never would have thought it of you, Grace, but you live and learn.'

'Thought what?'

'Tsu'tey...' Jake drawled, dragging out each syllable. There was a pause. 'Ha, I knew it! Norm, she's blushing, have you got down that she's blushing?'

'Got it,' Norm confirmed, writing busily.

'I am not blushing!' Grace insisted. Then realising that she was only encouraging them by rising to the bait, she struggled to get a hold on herself. Leaning forward in order to deliver her famous venomous hiss with more accuracy, she said:

'Look, I don't know where you two got the idea that I have feelings for Tsu'tey, but I can ensure you that it's _completely _professional.'

'Or _is _it?' Jake countered. Grace had to admire his tenacity as she snapped:

'Yes! Stop confusing my issues with yours!'

Norm sucked in his breath – maybe her jibe had been a little near the knuckle – but Jake seemed unperturbed.

'Who's confusing issues here?' he said mildly. 'I'm cool with my issues, I embrace my issues. I mean, sooner or later you're gonna have to face up to this, Grace.'

'It's in your imagination,' she said coldly, turning away.

'Oh really?' Jake called after her.

'Yes!'

'_Oh really?'_

Grace whipped round and lunged at him, ramming his chair back into the desk as she swiped at his eyes.

'Hey, that's not fair!' he protested, fending her off. 'You're not allowed to take advantage of – OW!' He managed to get his hands around her wrists and held her arms away from him, out to the sides. Unable to attack, Grace snarled at him in impotent rage.

'Did you see that, Norm?' Jake called shakily. 'She went for me, nails first!'

Grace gave a strangled shriek and wrenched herself out of his grasp, swinging round and storming across the room.

'Oh, come on, Grace, don't be like that!' Norm called after her. 'Jake just got a little carried away –'

'Bollocks.' Grace turned in the doorway to give them the most withering look she could mister. 'I'll leave you two delusional children until you think you can get a hold on your fantasies.' Slamming the door behind her she stomped down the corridor to the link room, booting up her bed with an angry swipe of her hand. In her avatar body she always felt relaxed and coordinated, more at ease and less plagued by the intricacies of life than in her human form. She had to get out, get out and cool off.

Was it her imagination, or had Jake absorbed just enough of the intelligence out of Norm's brain to leave them both completely jarheaded?

**A/N: This chapter was a bit OOC, maybe, but I thought it was funny. Your opinions?**

**MeAndMySelf2000:** Thanks a lot for your feedback. It's useful to know whether people want it to end happily or not.

**Joojootrain: **Thanks very much, that is high praise indeed!

**Na'viBlue:** Here's your update then.

**Blank098: **Hmm, good thought.

**QAvtar: **Aww, thanks a lot.

**Jinxed: **You didn't even notice yourself changing chapters? Wow, now I feel special! Yeah, the part with their names was really fun.

**Anonymous: **A bit weird? I suppose he'll be even worse in this chapter, but maybe chapter 3 was better?

**Purplepeopleeater: **More of Grace's past? Did chapter 3 fill that gap for you at all?

**Someone: **'Chattier'...lol. I'm trying to remember whether the 'I had to see you again' was my idea or my sister's...anyway, I liked it a lot too.

**Straychild: **Woohoo for Tsu'tey!

**Minako: **Thanks a lot!


	5. Mistaken on Purpose?

**Chapter 5: Mistaken on Purpose?**

**Disclaimer: **You know the drill.

**A/N: Sorry it's been such a long time...so basically I (True) have forgotten most of the nuances of argument that were in the original bunny, but I will attempt to recreate them for your extreme bored – that is to say, **_**amusement.**_

**Oh yeah, and I had Grace using what you guys have called 'English swearing' again in this chapter...advice on words she could say instead?**

**Boy, have I let myself in for some awkward conversations!**

Grace opened her Avatar eyes, attempted to roll off her bed, forgot the length of her legs, remembered it again, tried to disentangle herself and ended up walking forward with one foot hooked behind the other, like some sort of ballet reject.

'Stupid bloody Jarhead Jake!' she cursed, catching herself against the door frame and coming away with a palmful of splinters. 'Stupid Norm! Whose side is he on, anyway?'

She slammed the door violently behind her and took off at a sprint, heading straight into the jungle. That was stupid, but who cared? She felt like being reckless, and she needed to run. Besides, the whole operation was most likely about to go pear-shaped anyway. She'd rather not be around to see it, if anything.

Out here on the high ground it was still bright daylight between the trees, but there was a sharp angling of the sunbeams, an orange tint to the light, that set her instincts on edge. The sun was lying far to the west. It would soon be nightfall, and Grace's skin prickled at the thought. Without slowing her pace she began to get a hold on herself once more, setting a time limit after which she would have to turn back. Angry or not, being out in the forest after dark wouldn't do.

She wondered what Jake and Norm were doing back at the base, already a good quarter-mile behind her. Were they worrying? Setting off in pursuit? Radioing Trudy Chacon to fly over in search of her. Most likely they were sitting round the table, reviewing their "notes" and absentmindedly eating her dinner. Grace ground her teeth, her stomach rumbling. The primal instincts tended to get through from one body to another, and if anything it had been even longer since her avatar had had a meal. But she didn't turn back. Out of sheer stubbornness she ran faster.

_The incident with the trap?_ the voice of reason reminded her. _Yes? No? Supposing you bump into – _

She crashed through a tangle of vines, ran headlong into Tsu'tey and sat down hard.

_Is this the end?_ she wondered. Twenty minutes ago he had been setting traps outside her base, but now he didn't look to be in an altogether bad mood. In fact, having recovered from being crashed into, he was beginning to look amused.

'I see you, dreamwalker,' he said, looking down at her and shaking his head. 'Always I see you falling over. Fall off logs, fall out of trees...'

Grace made a growling noise and glared at him.

'Would you get up, please?'

'Huh?'

Tsu'tey raised the bag he was carrying. 'I am trying to gather fruit from these plants, and you are sitting on them.'

'Oh. Right. Sorry,' Grace huffed, scrambling to her feet. She backed up and he bent to pluck a handful of fruit from where she'd been.

'So,' she said sarcastically, when the silence grew awkward, 'are we observing our usual truce? Or are you still intending to harm me?'

Tsu'tey didn't answer at first. He continued to search among the leaves of the berry bushes, his stance relaxed. But as he picked he took a casual step, placing himself between her and her route back to the base.

Grace stiffened.

'I set the trap mostly for warriors,' he said, straightening up. 'Not for _doctors._ But it could have caught anyone.' He eyed her almost musingly. 'I try to catch a sky person there, and then I don't kill one here? If that is the rule, it is strange.' He gave a predatory chuckle, showing his teeth.

He took a step towards her. Grace swallowed surreptitiously, slowly flexing her fingers.

'Out of all the sky people, you are not my enemy. But maybe all sky people are enemies now. Can't kill one and leave another.'

Was he saying that all friendly relations between humans and Na'vi were at an end? _Maybe Jake's brain is bottomless, _Grace thought randomly. _Maybe that's why he's turned Norm into a complete idiot without becoming any more intelligent himself: his mind is just a black hole that swallows any sense you pour into it. And now he's started on Tsu'tey as well, and eventually we'll all be jarheads wandering around shooting one another with gay abandon and falling in love with the enemy..._

She fought the urge to slap herself, recalling that she had larger and more imminent problems right in front of her. Tsu'tey seemed to have reached a decision.

'If dreamwalker comes into the forest and is harmed during the day, the sky people will be angry,' he said. 'But I can't be held responsible for what happens to you at night.'

Grace bolted.

She had run obstacle courses four days out of seven every week since arriving on Pandora, practising sprinting through a jungle environment. She vaulted through the fork in the limbs of a tree, ducked between two vines and sprang over thorn bushes, throwing as many obstacles as she could between herself and her pursuer. She knew it was all futile, tricks out of a textbook, but there was no way she was going down without a fight.

She could hear him ghosting along behind her, making less than half her noise. She put on a spurt of speed and dashed past a tree, while he turned to the other side to avoid it. A screen of greenery separated them for an instant. She crashed into an open space, and then somehow he was ahead of her, doubling back to cut her off.

The whole chase had lasted perhaps ten seconds.

Her own momentum added to the force of his strike. He hit her squarely in the chest, flinging her of her feet, and before she had landed he was on her, bearing her backwards under his weight. She hit the ground and saw something flash in his hand: a stone knife. He swung it upwards, and as he did so the leaves shivered above their heads. Tsu'tey's head snapped round as an ear-splitting roar filled the clearing.

Its presence was all-consuming, but the first Grace saw of the thanator was when its paw knocked Tsu'tey away from her. It looked like a gentle bat, but the power of the blow sent him spinning head-over-heels across the clearing. He landed on his feet, teeth bared in a feral snarl. She saw blood begin to well from two gashes on his shoulder. Despite the attack, he hadn't lost the knife.

The thanator roared again, and Grace screamed. For a moment logic and knowledge vanished, and she was an animal, cowering to the ground with a predator on either side. The thanator gathered itself to attack, and then Tsu'tey sprang – not at her but over her, landing in front of it with his arms flung wide. The creature roared and he roared right back, brandishing his only weapon in its face.

The thanator charged.

Grace reeled backwards, bringing an arm in front of her face as Tsu'tey ducked between the teeth and claws, his face contorted with effort. He gave a shout, and then there was a terrible squealing cry. Grace stared between her fingers, unable to breath. He had succeeded in stabbing his knife into the roof of the creature's mouth.

The thanator wrenched itself off the blade and staggered backwards, whipping its head from side to side. Blood spattered from between its jaws, but it wasn't killed, far from it. It hesitated, but before it could move Tsu'tey rushed it again, waving his arms, yelling wordlessly. It backed up again, swiped once with its paws, then turned tail and disappeared into the trees.

Tsu'tey watched it out of sight, breathing heavily, his hands resting on his knees. Then he turned to look at Grace.

When his gaze fell on her she tried to get up, and found that she couldn't. All her muscles were tensed until they shook, and to her horror, she found herself biting back a sob. Her nerve was just about gone. She felt as though she might collapse, or black out, or throw up, or all three. Her body just wanted to shut down and recover.

But she knew that the danger wasn't over yet. The most lethal predator in the whole jungle was still standing right in front of her.

He approached her in an odd series of stops and starts, knelt down and took her hand. He could have been about to help her to her feet, or to jerk her forward at a good angle to bury his knife in her throat. Grace wondered if either of them knew which.

But something drew his attention. She twisted, following his eyes, and saw a flock of _atokarina_ moving with the breeze. There were more than she had ever seen before, travelling with that odd, jellyfish-like pulse of theirs, and she thought that she could hear a faint chiming noise accompanying their movement. Though that was probably just the after-shock of the attack ringing in her ears.

Tsu'tey muttered something in Na'vi along the lines of '_well, I suppose that clinches it,_' and hauled her upright.

She wished he hadn't. Her legs felt like jelly.

He left her to stagger against a tree for support and strode across to the other side of the clearing. Sitting down, he unstrapped a leather water flask and a small bundle containing squares of white cloth from his leg and began to tend his shoulder, slugging a generous stream of water across the wounds and then beginning to dab them clean.

By the time he'd finished washing them out and was pressing to stop the flow of blood, Grace had recovered herself enough to speak.

'Are you alright?'

'Yes,' he replied. 'They are not deep.'

'So...so Ey'wa just told you to spare me, right?'

'Maybe.' He grinned. Grace realised suddenly how much she loved those wry, savage grins of his. They might be only the barest sign of friendliness, but so far as they went, they were real. They were sincere. 'Maybe I misinterpret the signs,' he continued enigmatically. 'Maybe do it on purpose.' His smile faded, and he got to his feet and approached her, slowly this time. _'I see you, _DoctorGrace,' he said in Na'vi. '_I see that you are not our enemy. You cannot study a burned forest. _But as I said, how do I choose which sky person is the enemy, and which is not? If I kill you, there is no problem, you see?' He reached out, touching her cheek very lightly with the tips of his fingers. 'But I think I like you better alive.'

'I see,' Grace said, then added: '_I see you._'

'_I see you,_' Tsu'tey repeated. Then he lowered his hand and asked in English: 'are you hungry?'

Suddenly Grace recalled her skipped dinner, and a completely different lightheadedness from the kind she had been feeling swept over her. 'Yes,' she said emphatically. 'Yes, I most definitely am.'

Tsu'tey grinned again, more widely this time, and reached for his bag. She sat down cross-legged in front of him as he rummaged in it, choosing a fruit for each of them. Digging right to the bottom he produced a few strips of dried meat, wrapped in oil-cloth.

'Eat as much fruit as you like,' he said unceremoniously, handing some to her.

Grace shook her head experimentally as she accepted the food. Her ears hadn't stopped ringing from Tsu'tey's attack yet, let alone the thanator's, and now here they were, breaking bread together, figuratively speaking. It seemed surreal to her, but that was what war was like, she supposed. She remembered history lessons, accounts of opposing sides coming together on Christmas day to swap gifts and play football, and Jake's own stories of hanging out with enemy soldiers in the pub in Venezuela, playing snooker and trying to drink each other under the table while the high-ups engaged in the most fraught of negotiations...she raised the fruit to her lips, ravenous, but then Tsu'tey put a restraining hand on hers.

'Wait. We must give thanks to the All Mother.'

Grace lowered her hands again without protest and bowed her head quietly while he murmured a prayer in Na'vi. She wasn't in her best translating mode, but the words had a pleasing poetry to them. The growling of her stomach formed a soft accompaniment in the background.

She joined him in the final words, _for Eywa,_ and thoughtfully began to eat.

For a few minutes Tsu'tey was silent as well, munching fruit with an unselfconscious air that her human acquaintances never managed, but then, the edge taken off his hunger, he spoke.

'Did you pray just then, dreamwalker?'

For a moment the racial void between them was gone, and the eyes that watched her were the eyes of an equal, looking at her and _understanding._ So she did not lie, though she knew that her next words would rip the chasm back open again.

'No.'

'Then I have a question, this time,' he said, with a faint smile. She grinned in response at the old joke, and made an expansive gesture with one hand. 'Go ahead.'

'If you do not believe the All-Mother is real, why do you bow your head? I love Eywa, and if someone doubted her I would fight for her. What do you believe? And why do you sit so calmly and let me speak different things.'

'Well.' Grace stretched her feet out in front of her and stared straight between them, contemplating how to answer. 'First of all, because we are used to tolerating one another's beliefs where I come from. There are many religions, and as I see it you just have to accept that. And as for why I bow my head? Well, out of respect to you.'

'To me?'

'To you and the People. I do not share your beliefs, but I won't scorn them either. You see, I think they make you who you are. Your love of the forest, your fellowship with one another, they all come from your belief in Eywa, and that makes Eywa a good thing. Do you see?'

'I think I begin to, a little,' Tsu'tey nodded, his brow furrowing. 'You're people are so _strange..._ and what of you?'

'Huh? Me?'

'You said that on Earth there are many gods. What god do you follow?'

'Oh, I'm an atheist,' Grace said with a show of offhandedness. 'That's someone who doesn't believe in any god,' she added for his benefit. 'Science is my religion.' She looked up, and realised that Tsu'tey was staring at her with something raw and bright and shocking in his eyes.

She leaned forward to decipher the emotions. Pity and horror.

'How can you live that way?' he asked hoarsely.

'What?'

'No _god_? No mother? Just your body and the daylight world? No spirit?' She shook her head. '_How do you live like that?' _he asked in Na'vi. '_How do you bear it?_'

'With difficulty,' Grace admitted.

'But why do you think that?' Tsu'tey demanded. 'I thought you understood these things. I thought you understood them, the beautiful things...'

'I do,' Grace said, 'I do but oh, how to explain it...'

She clasped her hands behind her head and gazed up through the sifting leaves, a thousand different shapes and shades, the lower ones beginning to glow with bioluminescence, the upper layers still backlit with green from the sun.

'On Earth, there's a group called the Christians. They say that their god created the world in seven days. On the first day he separated life from dark, on the second he created the land and the sea, and he made all the plants and the animals, and the people.' She swallowed, as though trying to find the words in her own mouth. 'When you're small, you think that your father and...and your mother can do everything. No matter what happens, in the end they can protect you. But eventually you have to grow up, and then you see...that it's not that simple...' She found that she was blinking back tears as she spoke. Her head was full of the mining corporation's machines, cutting scars into the untouched forest, tearing at the innocence of these people and turning it into bitter experience. She was thinking of her own planet, festering in its polluted atmosphere. 'Is there really someone up there who loves all of us like children, who's guiding and protecting us? Some all-powerful person who's going to make everything turn out OK? Does this whole universe of ours only exist because some creature is standing over it, spinning the planets round their orbits? The truth is much sadder and much more beautiful than that. I've seen my people do terrible things, and I've studied the plants on this planet, and looked at the way they respond to the light, and the heat, and the water. There's nothing guiding them; they don't need it. The planets spin themselves. Sometimes they spin into a whole lot of shit, but they'll always spin out again eventually, and that's the beautiful thing. All this.' She raised a hand, gesturing round at the forest. 'You, me, these trees, this world, can grow and exist, without any help from anyone. I've studied the plants on this planet, and here's what I've learned. Heaven and hell both exist, and they're both. Right. Here.'

She opened her eyes, to gauge his reaction to the explanation that she'd just succeeded in putting fully into words for herself. He was watching her, not angrily but very steadily, as though deeply considering the words she had spoken. All the same, she knew she had shaken him. She had attacked everything he considered truth, and he was only making himself consider it calmly.

'Your connection to the forest, though,' she said. 'The way you understand things, _tsahaylu_...does it really matter whether Ey'wa makes them or not? They're real, either way.'

Abruptly, Tsu'tey stood.

'Come, _DoctorGrace_,' he said, holding out a hand. 'Come.'

She took his hand and scrambled to her feet, her body protesting at the sudden change of pace. Twilight was truly drawing in now, and the darkness seemed to ooze out from between the thickest trees as he made of them.

'I show you something,' he said, in an oddly soft and rasping voice. 'Come quick. _Hurry._ I show you.'

**A/N: Yup, I just *had* to bring theology into it somewhere. Guess my own beliefs! I hope the second half of that chapter didn't bore you all too much, and that the first half wasn't too jerky, and that the overall mood wasn't too schizoid and annoying. Drop me a line, tell me what you think.**

**A quick heads-up: We are now approaching what I envisaged as the end of the story, but several of your reviews seem to be anticipating that I will follow the cannon further. So I could do a oneshot after the end to show what happens next, or even continue it properly, if you all clamour. But see where I propose to end it first. I just didn't want it to come as a 'WHAT? It's OVER?' blow to you all, 'cause I hate it when that happens. Not that many of the fics I've read have ever finished. **

**True**

**Lily: **Yeah, I decided to make Tsu'tey and Neytiri brother and sister, just for this fic.

**Natzamin: **Glad we have you convinced, and that the arguing seemed cute rather than just sloppy.

**remylover1234: **Thanks a lot! Remy as in Remus Lupin...?

**MeAndMySelf2000: **Waaaaay, long review. You're welcome on the shout front. Apparently Grace is meant to be, like, 50, but her avatar is more like 35...and Tsu'tey gets more years for his extra experience of Pandora...glad you don't find it perverted, anyway.

Aww, I'm so touched that you were checking for updates! You should get an account, then your alerts would do that for you. Thanks also for your encouragement on the serious/humorous front, that's the kind of feedback I like...positive and detailed...

**QAvatar: **Many thanks, here's the next one. Does your name have something to do with Quaritch?

**Na'viBlue : **Let's shout again!

**Trisha: **Yay for cute bickering and constructive feedback!

**Jumpingjellyfish: **Yeah, I like Jake in that chapter too. Glad you didn't find him OOC.

**Jinxed: **I know, she takes aging gracefully (no pun intended) to a whole new level! Haha, aging Gracefully, I should use that sometime! Cheers!


	6. I Show You

**Chapter 6: I Show You**

**A/N: Yes! I feel so clever! I forgot that I'd completed this chapter and thought that all I had to show for my two-and-a-half weeks' holiday was one random fluffy oneshot (i.e. Precious Little), but it isn't! I have! *runs in happy little circles * And also:**

**SQUEEEEEEE!**

**Ladies and Gentlemen, this fic has been nominated for the Universal Fanfiction Open Awards by the author **Still-Birth**, who is a super-duper reader of discernment and deserves a special heart-shaped cookie! I suppose that means I should get my skates on and actually complete it, so that it can be eligible for winning instead of just an Honourable Mention. If I succeed, I hope you know how to change your nomination from incomplete to complete, **Still-Birth**. But don't hold your breath; I am about to go to a new school and start my A levels (actually school work normally stimulates fanfiction production, fanfiction being the highest form of procrastination, but there we go). Anyway, many thanks!**

**A special shout out also goes to **heartbrokenbella**, whose plea for an update did wonders for my ego. Anyway, I'm sure you'd all rather read the story than listen to my burblings, so on we go!**

Tsu'tey darted between the trees, setting a pace that had her sprinting to keep up. She thought about calling out to him to slow down, but there was something about his manner which seemed to insist on silence. So she struggled after him as best she could, planting her feet in his footprints to avoid tripping.

After a few minutes she realised that they were heading into an area of the jungle which she had never explored before. Never on foot at least; the jutting rock formations and the slope of the ground were familiar. She had seen them in a birds-eye view, from high up in Trudy's helicopter.

'Hey,' she said, 'aren't we getting close to the Well of –'

'Shh!'

Finally Tsu'tey slowed, until they were picking their way at a slow walk through the undergrowth. He moved absolutely silently, as though afraid of being heard. At last he stopped in front of a screen of broad leaves, turned to her and spoke.

'_Doctor_grace, can I trust you?'

'Of course you can,' she whispered back.

He swallowed, eyes flickering nervously from side to side. 'You tell no-one of this. _Especially_ not my people...but especially not yours. You understand?'

'Yes,' she nodded. 'I promise.'

'Good.' He hesitated for another moment, then turned and pulled the leaves aside so that she could pass through.

For a moment she was disoriented, and then she realised that she was no longer in thick jungle, but in a more open glade, and that there was much more light than she had been expecting. She took a step forward, blinking as her eyes adjusted. In front of her were several...she would have to call them 'willows' but they were like no trees she had ever seen before. Long pink fronds swayed in the faintly stirring air, giving off a soft radiance which dimmed the bioluminescence of the surrounding forest. _Atokarina _shimmered in the air between the trees, and she realised that she had found their source.

'Utral Aymokriyä,' Tsu'tey said. 'Tree of Voices.'

'This is one of the places you won't talk about,' she whispered. 'The place you don't let dreamwalkers see –'

'Yes,' Tsu'tey said shortly. 'Now come.'

Grace glanced down, and found that the earth was carpeted with the mossy grass which she had questioned Tsu'tey about at their second meeting. So there was a link. The two grew together, at least. She had noticed that the grass flourished only in the lighter and more open areas of the forest. The brighter phosphorescence of the Tree of Voices must be enough to give them the extra few watts of light they needed to grow. Incredible.

Momentarily distracted, she knelt down to examine the grass. She knew that a part of her was stalling, choosing to examine this manageable phenomenon, rather than grapple with the mystery of the trees. She had no idea as of yet what that mystery might be, but she had a feeling that it was all coming together – the electrical pulses between the trees, Tsahaylu...something that Tsu'tey might show her after she'd said she didn't believe in God.

'This is the plant I asked you about the second time we talked,' she said, brushing her fingers over the rough grass. It pulsed with light when she put pressure on it. 'The one that you said is pollinated by the _riti_ fly. It likes sunny, open spots, so it's not common in the thick jungle...I guess these trees must provide the little bit of extra light it needs...'

'Yes, always the moss grows with the tree, they need each other. But _come_.' He pulled on her arm, lifting her to her feet. She felt strange as he led her towards the trees themselves, subdued. She had never been religious, but that didn't mean she was immune to the beauty of a cathedral. This was the same thing, and for a moment she felt as though she shouldn't approach. This place was for the Na'vi, not for her. But Tsu'tey was holding her hand, pulling her in among the curtains of leaves. He brushed them lightly with his fingers as he passed. Like the moss, the glowing tendrils shone when she touched them, brightening from pink towards pure white light.

'It's beautiful,' she said.

'Here is where we hear the voices of the people,' Tsu'tey said quietly.

She was nearly at the foot of the tree itself. These plants allowed the Na'vi to tap into the tree network, he had said. This was the answer to the questions that had plagued her for so long. Abruptly Grace realized the magnitude of his gift. He had risked the wrath of his people and betrayal from her to show her this. But she sensed that there was something more to this than the answer to her question, something he wanted her to learn...

A shining tendril rippled past her face. Slowly Grace reached out for it, watching Tsu'tey carefully to see if he would object, if she was permitted to touch as well as to look. He made no move to prevent her, so she took the frond in her hand. The blue of her skin turned almost white in its radiance.

'Come here, _doctor_Grace.' He was behind her, quiet humour in his voice. 'Let me show you.' He reached up, catching three fronds together in his broad hand. He reached for his braid and brought it over his shoulder, holding it to the leaves. Grace watched the white nerve endings twine around them, pulling them together. They glowed with a brighter light at the point of contact.

'Tree of Voices,' Tsu'tey repeated. 'Now you try.'

Her hands trembling, though she didn't quite know why, Grace imitated the process, catching three strands and fumbling for the end of her ponytail. Her heart began to flutter as she held it to the leaves. Had Tsu'tey been right when he said that their false bodies couldn't form the same connection as the Na'vi could? Or would she be able to...do what, exactly? What was the purpose of this connection?

There was a brief moment of fuzziness in her mind as the nerves connected, and then she heard the voices.

Thousands of them, a soft, distant murmur, like when she would sit in the library at school and hear the noise of the building going on all around her, but softly, distantly, soothing rather than frantic. Stray words flicked out at her like moths in car headlamps on a dark road, briefly illuminated and then gone, and now there were images, too: images of faces, of hunting techniques and flowers and hot summer nights around the fire. Grace focussed on that picture, the excitement of the evening drawing her in, and thus found that she could sort through the memories at will.

She sifted among the sounds and homed in on the voice of a woman, singing a slow, unaccompanied song of incredible beauty. She delved deeper and found the same woman's memory of her children, running and laughing on the faint jungle paths. And then she found Tsu'tey's voice.

Not coherent sentences, exactly, more like the impressions of thoughts. He was glad that she could make the connection, startled and happy at hearing her voice, but there were other, more complex emotions underneath...he was worried about whether the Tree would be safe now that he had shown her, and he was still struggling to understand what he was doing, why he was letting her speak with him and answering her questions...and there was something else, too. He was waiting for her reaction to the Tree, wanting to know what she would make of it.

She broke the connection and stepped back from the tree, her legs unstable as water.

'I...I...'

_Oh my God._

A network, a biological internet where the Na'vi could store their thoughts and memories for the next generation, accessed by this tree...

'And it links up through the whole forest,' she said out loud. She was almost hyperventilating now, her breath coming in faster and deeper gasps. 'And in the places where there are no trees...' She looked down at her feet. 'I guess this grass helps to link it. I took a sample: it has wide roots, and it must grow on the plains between forests and link everything up...a _global _network...but why? Why would something like that evolve?'

She turned to look at Tsu'tey. He slipped his braid off the tree and took a step towards her.

'Grace...?'

'The People care for the trees,' she said. 'They respect them and help them to grow, and they do it because the trees provide them with this network. A symbiotic relationship. But _how_?'

She sat down suddenly, shaking her head.

'You people have gotta be right,' she stated. 'There's no way this could have evolved by itself. There's gotta be some kind of a god out there.'

Tsu'tey pulled her to her feet and hugged her so hard her feet left the ground.

'Woah!' she yelped, clutching at his shoulders to steady herself.

'I knew,' he said, crushing her ribs. 'I knew you would see!'

_And he was going to kill me an hour ago?_ Caught between terror, joy and impatient curiosity, Grace struggled to breath.

Tsu'tey lifted her up above him so that he could look into her face.

'We must all make our own way in this world,' he said, 'and there is pain, but mother Ey'wa does not forget us. What our ancestors have learned she keeps safe for us, and when we die we join her in the tree.'

He put her down. Grace found that her legs wouldn't hold her. She stumbled backwards and sat down on one of the shelves of earth formed by the roots of the tree. She slumped forward and rested her forehead in her hands, breathing deeply.

'Grace?' Tsu'tey asked. He sat beside her. 'You are OK?'

'Yeah,' Grace huffed. 'I'm just...amazed.'

Tsu'tey smiled. 'Is special, yes? Here, you can see God.'

Grace sighed. 'I think I'm a little bit crazy right now,' she said. 'Tomorrow morning, I'll probably wake up and say that there's some kind of scientific explanation for it. But I can't see it now. These things...well, if you told me something put them here on purpose, I would believe you.' She paused. 'I would..._want_ to believe you.'

'I have a question,' he said.

'Shoot.'

'If nobody puts these things here, how do they come?'

'Ah, well...' Grace massaged her temples. She felt altogether too shattered for a proper explanation of evolution. 'Things fit together the way they do, because...if there is a way to live...an animal or a plant will always come to fill it.'

'Yes, yes,' Tsu'tey nodded. 'Everything has its place.'

'Mmm.' Grace leaned backwards to look at the hanging fronds once again. They seemed to sway even without wind, shimmering with frosty radiance in the twilit glade. 'Tsu'tey,' she said suddenly, 'I...for showing me this...thank you. Thank you for everything.'

He grinned at her. 'Is fine. You want to learn, it's a good thing. I know when I show you will understand, know I can trust. And when you say you have no mother, I know I have to bring you here. Some Sky People hide their eyes, don't want to see. But you, always searching. Ought to find something.'

'I see what you mean. Just because I don't think of _Ey'wa_ in the same way that you do, it doesn't mean I don't think the tree is special.'

'By this you mean...' Tsu'tey frowned over the English, '...that you _do_ think the tree is special?'

Grace laughed. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'That was a complicated way of phrasing it. Yes, it's special. Very special.' She lay back and raised an arm over her head, gesturing at the tree above them. 'God, Ey'wa, souls...whatever you call it, there's something very precious up there. There's a wealth of thoughts and memories, generations' worth, and if that's not a soul, then I don't know what is.'

She fell silent, and let her eyes grow unfocussed, so that the trees blurred into a haze of pink above her. She wondered whether the voices that she had heard were just memory, or whether the ancestors of the Omatakaya really lived on in the Tree, as Tsu'tey had said. Nothing seemed impossible right now. If so, did the dead Na'vi speak to the living, through the _tsahaylu_ connection? She imagined what that would be like. Never having to lose anyone. Knowing that they had _gone on_, that they were safe in the tree...

Until the tree got cut down, of course.

She shook her head, dispelling the thought, and found another question.

'So can you communicate through the tree? With other clans, I mean? Use it to send messages?'

'Is not _tele-fon_, _doctor_Grace,' Tsu'tey said.

'I heard you, though.'

'Hmph. Is true. Yes, you can hear voices, but outside of one tree, it all gets a bit spread out, you know? From another tribe we wouldn't get a message of words, more...a sense of trouble. Or happiness, or whatever the thoughts of the clan were. To send an _ikran_ is quicker.'

'I see.' Grace closed her eyes altogether.

'I hear your voice, too,' Tsu'tey said after a moment.

'And what did it sound like? A long row of exclamation marks, I expect.'

'Excla-what?'

Grace made an exasperated noise in the back of her throat. 'Oh, for goodness' – sorry. You know when Sky People put their words in writing? Well, an exclamation mark is a sign to show that words were spoken loudly, or surprised...something like that.'

'Yes, you were loud and surprised,' Tsu'tey agreed. 'But now quiet.'

'Huh?'

'You are very silent.'

'No I'm not, I've been talking all this time –'

He shook his head impatiently. 'Talk around the edges, but silent inside. I think you have many thoughts.' He leaned over so as to meet her eyes. Grace averted her gaze from his golden stare. She felt pinned down, without quite knowing why.

'Do you?' she said, trying to speak calmly.

He grinned, though his eyes were still watchful. 'You see? As soon as I ask a question, it is another question from you. You don't want to speak.' He looked at her sidelong. 'You must have secret thoughts.'

'Well, I wasn't silent until you started asking your questions,' Grace said. She got to her feet. 'I'm thinking about the tree. I need to work it out in my head before I talk about it.' She was a little surprised by her own brusqueness. Normally she was as courteous as she knew how among the Na'vi, but now that Tsu'tey had shown her the Tree of Voices, she felt as though some barrier had been removed between them. All the same, she reflected, it wouldn't do to push her luck. She tried to soften her demeanour a little as she stretched and turned about.

'This place is deceptive,' she said. 'It's darker than I thought. I have to go back to the station. They'll be missing me.'

'Back to the place where I make my trap?' Tsu'tey clarified. He stood up. 'I come with you. In case the bad _palalukan_ comes again.'

'Ah, don't worry about me. I think I understand how to deal with them, now that I've watched you do it once.'

'So you are fine to fight _palalukan _now, is that so?'

'I feel like I'm fine for anything, to be honest,' Grace said. Her system was still humming with the thrill of discovery. Besides, she felt that she'd had her share of action for one day – though, in practise, it didn't always work like that. Either way, fear was the furthest thing from her mind. 'Actually, I wasn't that worried about the _palalukan_. I was more afraid of you.'

Tsu'tey gave a bark of laughter. 'Very wise, dreamwalker! You saw what happened before: hunting _palalukan_ himself turned and ran when Tsu'tey came to meet him! But come; now he will have heard us laughing. He will be coming to teach us some respect, if we don't go quickly.'

He caught hold of her hand and darted for the jungle screen. Grace took one last look over her shoulder at the shining grove before the foliage obscured it from view. Tree of Voices. She shut her eyes tight for a moment, and when she opened them again the last glow of the willows was gone.

They darted quickly between the trees, and Grace, relaxing and allowing her instincts to guide her over the invisible ground, soon found herself keeping pace. Some things were easier when you stopped trying. In a few minutes her eyes had adjusted from the brightness of the willows, and then she was able to make out more of the jungle.

She was so rarely out at night, but she could still remember the first time. The brilliant glow of bioluminescence that had traced and highlighted every leaf, as soon as they had dared to turn out their torches. She craned her neck back to gaze up at the blueish mosaic of leaves above her, and caught her foot on a jutting root.

'Don't trip,' Tsu'tey said, catching her.

'Sorry,' she muttered. But he seemed to understand. He slowed to a gentle jog. They were nearing the bunker where she, Norm and Jake had been staying; she could see the clearing between the trees, denoted by a patch of darkness rather than a patch of light.

They reached the edge of the trees.

'Stars,' Tsu'tey said, looking out over the ridge, up at the night sky.

'Yeah,' Grace said. 'You don't see them much around here. I could never get used to it at first, you know, how it was darker out of the jungle than inside it. I can't sleep with all the light around.'

'When the people from the plains come to us, they find it too close. They miss seeing the sky. Is the same with you?'

'Well,' Grace sighed, 'where I come from you can't see much sky. But I like to see the stars, yes.'

He squeezed her hand. They stood side-by-side for a moment, gazing out at the view. Below the ridge, the forest stretched out, marked by little glints of bioluminescence winking between the dark covering of leaves. Above them, the velvety sky was studded with stars – thousands of them, sharp, luminous, dizzying. On the horizon PLANET was rising, hazy and blue-green. The stars around it faded and disappeared in its brighter, closer light.

She could see dark silhouettes against its face – floating mountains. And, closer to, her own cabin cut a black hole in the starscape. It looked safe, and familiar, and very, very small.

'Well,' she said, a little shakily because of the view, 'here we are.'

Tsu'tey took her by the shoulder and turned her back towards him. The markings on his face shone brightly in the darkness of the clearing. They seemed to shine as brilliantly as the stars, and they made her just as giddy. PLANET had left a ghostly afterimage burned into her eye. She blinked, trying to clear her vision. She couldn't see.

Tsu'tey's expression was unsure, almost afraid. He put his hand on her cheek. Grace looked into his eyes and felt sixteen again: breathless, fizzing, lighter than air.

His skin was no warmer than the moist tropical night, but it seemed to burn her just the same. It wasn't exactly heat, but something with the intensity of heat. A form of energy with the power to change. His hands trembled as they grasped her shoulders, but they moved without hesitation. They pulled her to him, twined in her braided hair, tilted her head backwards and kissed her.

Years of research. Millions of dollars. Days and weeks of painstaking labour to grow this hybrid avatar, to align its brain with hers and thread the lattice of nerves through every muscle and along every limb, so that she could feel and move in this body as though it were her own. But the link was stable at ninety-nine per cent alignment. A part of your mind was always in your own body.

But now her body, her work, her human life – all were forgotten. She wrapped her arms around Tsu'tey's neck and let them melt out of her mind. All her training, exploration and research... during all of that, she had never felt so purely Na'vi as she did now, in this one perfect moment.

'So did he kiss you?'

'Jake, you should not be asking that kind of question,' Grace said, pulling open her desk drawer, glancing inside and then slamming it shut again. 'It is sick and wrong.' She moved along the work benches, pushing sheaves of paper aside as she did so.

'Hey, I think I have the right to know if my boss is dating the enemy,' Jake complained, wheeling himself after her.

Grace rounded on him.

' "The enemy,"' she echoed scornfully. 'That's the trouble with you marines: the slightest whiff of contention and you have to blow it into an all-out war. Besides, who says you're the only one who's allowed to consort with the Na'vi? We all know you're sweet on Neytiri.' She got down on her hand and knees and peered under the lab bench. 'Norm, has this jarhead been in my desk drawer?'

Norm was standing to one side, his hands innocently clasped behind his back. 'Not that I've noticed,' he answered.

Suddenly Grace lunged forward, seizing Jake around the waist and dragging him half-out of his wheelchair.

'I'm not sitting on anything,' he laughed, not even bothering to protest. 'So when are you seeing him again?'

Grace cuffed him on the side of the head and turned in desperation to her colleague.

'Norm?'

He stared back at her, straight-faced. 'What Jake said.'

'Fine,' Grace sighed, closing her eyes in defeat. 'I'm seeing him tomorrow.

'Now _please_ give my cigarettes back!'

**A/N: I know, so I copped out on the kissing. But anyway. This jokey final scene could be the end of the fic if you are all delighted with it, but on the other hand you may find it a little harsh to be left teetering on what we know is the brink of ex-plo-shuns and stuff. Personally I favour continuing on a little bit, just to show the conclusion of the relationship. Anyway, my co-writer Essence is standing over me, wanting her laptop, so ciao for now!**

**True and Essence.**


	7. What Does It Mean?

**Chapter 7: What Does it Mean?**

**A/N: UWAH, has it been a long time! Most of you wanted me to continue this, and I agree with you that it needs a more wrapping-up scene, so now I'm *finally* getting round to it. I have become an A level student since we last spoke, guys; you have no idea. **

**Anywayz, this chapter will contain: me realising what an a) uncanonical and  
b) stupid decision it was to make Tsu'tey and Neytiri brother and sister (blame IMDB, it told us so!), and trying to work round it, and also some shameless fast-forwarding. Because, while I'm sure that seeing the next few distressing scenes from the film (we're just on the eve of the mowing down of the Tree of Voices and the destruction of Hometree, for those of you who are lost, and while Grace and Tsu'tey were chastely kissing, Jake and Neytiri were getting it on) from Grace's POV would be interesting...well, it wouldn't be interesting at all, would it? It would just be a re-telling of what we've all already seen far more vividly on the big screen, and it would take forever and I can't be bothered to hack through it. So we will steam through the point where AU touches canon without pausing and get back to the original story, yes? Good.**

**True**

'I see you, mother,' Tsu'tey said, touching his brow in the formal gesture of greeting.

'Tsu'tey.' Mo'at looked up from the animal hide she was scraping clean of fat. 'Are you not with your hunters?'

'We killed early today,' Tsu'tey answered shortly, squatting down next to her. '...may I speak with you?'

Mo'at's response was to wrench a length of fleece from the hide, twist it round the spindle on her knee and hand it to him.

'Get to work on this yarn,' she said, 'and tell me what it is that is troubling you.'

Tsu'tey took the spindle somewhat dourly and began to roll it against his thigh, drawing the wool steadily out of the fleece and twisting it into a cord. The Omatakaya made no formal distinctions, but he had always felt this to be more of a woman's job; besides which, he had come to ask for council, not to be put to work. But of course that was Mo'at – 'idle hands make troubled minds,' she had always told him sternly, and for her there was no conversation so weighty or mystical that it could not be accompanied by useful work. He rolled the spindle in silence for a few minutes, building up a decent length of yarn, and then Mo'at asked,

'Well? What is troubling you, Tsu'tey?'

'Ey'wa has forsaken me.'

If ever there was a statement sure to provoke an eruption, this was it, but Mo'at didn't explode. She seemed to consider his statement for a few moments, scraping briskly away at the hide all the while, and then she repeated,

'Forsaken you?'

'Yes.'

'What makes you say this?'

'I...Neytiri...the Sky People...' Tsu'tey made a hopeless gesture, as though snatching for his thoughts. 'I thought everything would be so simple for us. It would be my task to lead the People, and Neytiri's to speak to Ey'wa, and I knew I could do this. But she –' He gave a particularly hard jerk on the yarn, and Mo'at said, 'careful.'

'Is it _nothing_ to her?' he burst out. 'I whittled her first bow; when she first brought down prey with it. I was there! _We_ were there. And now she ignores everything we say to her and cares only for that dreamwalker –'

'I thought,' Mo'at interrupted coolly, 'that Ey'wa had forsaken _you_. Not your sister.'

Tsu'tey flinched, pinned between anger and admiration. She had caught him, of course; cut through all his bluster to the one question he was avoiding. Who was he to cast a stone at Neytiri, when he himself...

'She has forsaken us all,' he muttered.

'We all clasp hands in the circle of life, Tsu'tey.' For the first time, Mo'at stopped her work, and took his right hand in hers. She did not take his left, however, but stretched her free hand out, as though reaching for a third person, invisible to him. 'Life flows through all, from her to us, from us to her. What she takes with one hand she gives back with the other; surely you know this?'

'Not this time. The Sky People –'

'My child, where is your trust? After the bad year will come the good, as before, as always.'

'But how can Ey'wa fight these people?'

'Fight? She does not take sides. Listen, Tsu'tey. Maybe the time of the Omatakaya is coming to an end, but the circle of life will go on. Surely you are not afraid to cast yourself into it when the time comes?'

'So that is why the All-mother has put Neytiri under the spell of this dreamwalker?' Tsu'tey couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice. 'Is it a sign to us, that we are to accept our death and love our murderers?'

'Perhaps, perhaps.' Mo'at had taken up her scraping-flint again. 'But then again, maybe it is not Death she sees in his eyes. Maybe it is something stronger.'

'You knew, didn't you?' His hands were still; the spindle lay forgotten on his knee. 'You knew what would happen when you ordered her to teach him.'

'I suspected it.' Mo'at's tone was unrepentant – maybe even a little amused. 'Something spoke to Neytiri from the first instant she saw Jakesully. Such a sign hardly needs a _Tsahik _to interpret it.'

'And what is to become of me?' Tsu'tey demanded. 'How shall _olo'eyktan's_ destiny match _tsahik's_? Or is mine not important?'

'_All_ destinies are important,' Mo'at said sternly. She paused for thought. 'Ey'wa has not told me what your fate shall be, but she comforts me in my dreams. She tells me that your future will be good.'

'So is my path already chosen, then?'

Mo'at looked up again, and this time her expression was softer. 'Ey'wa's will is not set in stone, Tsu'tey,' she said. '_You_ are Ey'wa; a part of her; you must find out what the whole body wants from this part of it.' She laid a hand on his shoulder.

'Mother, I am lost,' Tsu'tey said softly.

Mo'at smiled. 'Are you?' she asked. 'Do you remember one of the very first times we took you into the forest, when you were only knee-high? We walked until we came to a deep ravine, and you said, "mother, there is no way across." Then your father stepped out onto a narrow log which spanned the whole chasm, and your eyes were so wide!' She chuckled. 'Of course there was a way across. You just didn't like it. Tell me, Tsu'tey, are you lost, or do you dislike the path you see before you?'

Tsu'tey sighed. Caught again. 'I fear that this is one of the false trails one thinks one sees when one loses one's way. Leading no-where.' One analogy deserved another, at any rate.

'Then there is only one way to find out. Try it and see.' Mo'at turned back to scraping her hide, as though the matter was completely decided.

'Mother,' Tsu'tey said, 'do you know what this path _is_ that I am following?'

'Son.' Mo'at chuckled. 'I am a woman. Of course I know.'

* * *

Pain.

She had never felt it like this before. Ripping, burning, aching, blurred by morphine but not erased, eating away at her courage and her strength…she hadn't realised, or had always forgotten, how _exhausting_ pain was. It wasn't the bleeding that nudging her towards oblivion. It was the hurt that came with it.

Even when she thought that she had found that balancing-point where the pain itself was bearable, the knowledge of what had caused it and what it meant made her sick to her stomach. Grace almost wished she were an animal, so that she didn't have to know what was coming, all the dreadful scientific ins and outs of it. Nor to remember what had come before…

It seemed that when Jake had jabbed the needle into her arm, he had freed her mind of physical pain just enough to allow it to dwell on every terrible thing that had happened…and the morphine haze made it impossible to grab onto anything, but kept every part of the nightmare floating just beyond her reach. Her mind spun, trying to make bargains, just to pretend to itself that there was some way out of this pain.

_God, I could take the physical shit if I was just lucid enough to tell exactly how bad it is instead of this stumbling around…_

_Alright, alright, I'll go back to the RDA and help them knock down the forest like a good girl if it'll just _stop the pain_…_

_I wouldn't care if I died straight afterwards as long as I could have one good crack at Quaritch first, the motherfucking son of a bitch…_

Some kind of a mask was pressed to her face, there was a hiss and she inhaled what she realised must have been a shot of oxygen. The haze cleared a little, and she found herself looking up into Jake's face.

'Your breathing got a little faint there, Grace.'

'H-hey, Jake,' she groaned, closing her eyes for a moment and opening them again. For a moment it was such a relief to be able to see the whole cabin clearly, without her brain chasing itself around in drugged-up circles, that she felt almost peaceful. 'Where…where are we?'

'In the cabin we were using during my training,' he explained. 'Trudy's flying it somewhere so the RDA won't find us.

'Oh,' she said. 'That explains the swaying. Y'know, all this noise and movement's been giving me some really weird dreams.'

Jake grimaced. 'Sorry about that.'

'S'okay. Where's Norm? Norm's with us, right?'

'Yup,' Jake grinned. 'He got locked up with us after he took a swing at a soldier twice his size, remember? Anyway, right now he's…on the roof.'

'Reckless,' Grace muttered.

'Hey, someone's got to make sure the cabin stays attached to the helicopter.'

'Guess so.' Grace closed her eyes, trying to snuggle down further – she registered that she was in an open link-bed; the gel was presumably the softest surface they could find in the cabin. 'Hey, Jake?'

'Yeah?'

'All that stuff…Hometree…'

'I know.' His face twisted a bit – pain, confusion over the pain, anger at himself for feeling the pain…_you boys make it so hard for yourselves,_ she wanted to say.

'Oh,' she mumbled. 'I was kind of hoping some of it would be the morphine-dreams.'

He chuckled a little and blinked hard, shaking his head. Grace stared at the ceiling. Now that she was awake again, she could feel the pain in her belly stalking closer, and she was sure that she would soon be wishing for the haze again. There was just no way out. Of suffering, for her, or of their current problem.

'Where are we going?' she whispered.

'Back to the clan. We're going to get you some help, Grace. They'll be able to do something.'

'Why would they help us?' she asked softly.

'Because I'm going to help them,' he answered at once.

'Jake…' Grace whispered. Stubborn, gutsy, pig-headed Jake…of course he wasn't going to stop trying. She wondered what it would be like to be like him, to have the kind of soldier-mind that could see horrors and impossible situations and the most tragically farcical screw-ups and still say, 'alright, never mind, get up, move on to the next plan.' The sort of mind she'd thought she had, until she came here.

_Maybe_, she thought,_ this bullet is for the best. I don't have his guts to carry on fighting in a hopeless situation, but this is something I just can't let go…I'm glad it's not going to be my problem…_

'We've got some fight in us,' Jake was pep-talking, patting her arm – she supposed that was the closest he got to hair-stroking, which would have been less painful in all honesty. 'The way Norm blew up…'

Grace allowed herself one smile. Jake here with her – coming down on the right side at last – Norm and Trudy up in the helicopter, she throwing of all her army brainwashing as lightly as a spruce throws off snow, he blossoming by the second, Max on their side back home…everyone she cared about had come through for her. As for the Na'vi…well, there was no danger of their being on the opposite side to her. Did it really matter so much if they would never speak to her again?

'Tsu'tey is olo'eyktan now. You know he's not going to let us within twenty miles of the clan.' She tried to voice it as an objective problem. How had it all gone so wrong so suddenly? One moment they were dancing beneath the frosty strands of the Tree of Voices, kissing like teenagers beneath the stars, the next everything was gone in flames and avarice.

'Grace, I…' Jake sighed. 'I'm sorry, for, you know…'

'Shagging Neytiri?' Grace suggested dryly.

He ducked his head. 'Yeah. I screwed up.'

Grace laughed – rather breathlessly. The pain was really kicking in now.

'Don't worry about it, kid. I screwed up too.'

He looked up, blinking. 'You did?'

She laughed again, harder this time. All that teasing in the cabin when he and Norm were accusing her of being in love, and yet it seemed he'd still missed it.

'Yeah.' Her breath caught. 'Ow.'

'You alright?' he asked, worry flickering up in his eyes.

'Mm-hm.' She didn't trust herself to make any more vocal noises. 'Hurts a little.'

'Yeah, I…' She watched him struggle for something to say, to ease either the pain of the bullet wounds or of what was happening outside. 'Morphine?' he asked lamely, reaching for the trauma kit.

_Make it two shots and end this_, she thought. But she was either too brave or too much of a coward to say it. _Don't want to see this through. Don't wanna die_. Knowing that she would regret it once she was back in the dreams, she nodded.

'Please.'

* * *

'Neytiri.'

Neytiri looked up from the poultice she was grinding to smear on a burn on her leg – it seemed you had to pretend these little things mattered, even if the whole forest was about to be burnt with you in it anyway. She saw Tsu'tey standing over her.

'Tsu'tey,' she said coldly, turning back to her work.

He squatted down.

'I want to talk to you.'

'I do not wish to speak!' she hissed fiercely. Tsu'tey said nothing, but an arm wrapped round her shoulders and next moment she found herself pulled into a tight embrace.

Then she started crying.

Where had her big brother gone? Ever since the Sky People had come and built their school, he had been uncompromisingly angry and she had been frustrated by his anger. She had been taller than him all through their teenage years – boys grew so slowly; as she came closer to Ey'wa, he remained small and stubborn – and even when he outstripped her in height again, he had seemed like a little child. But now she was the small one again. She buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed.

'Sister, forgive me,' he said. That was a new one, but then she supposed that a chief had to learn more diplomacy…a chief – that thought hurt so much that she let out a wail. Tsu'tey hugged her tighter.

'For what?' she whispered. 'You should forgive me…all the time I refused to listen to you, my older brother, you were right…'

'Forgive me,' Tsu'tey repeated, 'for turning my anger on you, when in truth I was angry at myself.'

He had thought he was calm. For a moment, talking to Mo'at, it had seemed to make sense – him and _Doctorgrace, _Neytiri and _Jakesully_ – a sign that somehow Ey'wa would bring them to terms with the Skypeople. Of course, when Jakesully and Neytiri came crashing into Hometree with the news that they were now mated for life and oh, by the way, the Tree of Voices is gone forever, torn down and destroyed by Sky People who cared _nothing_, the fact that he had _almost, almost fallen for them_ had only served to make him twice as furious.

'I was foolish,' Neytiri was mumbling into his shoulder.

'I doubly so.'

'I really believed…hoped that he had changed…he seemed to begin to hear what I told him…'

'Shh.' Tsu'tey soothed her. 'It's nothing to what I believed.'

She pulled away, blinking. 'What?'

He shook his head. 'Nothing.' _Grace_.

Neytiri couldn't have guessed his thoughts, but now she asked, 'the Sky body…_Doctor_Grace…'

'Yes,' Tsu'tey agreed, 'she was still trying to help us.' He spoke as if to comfort her, though really he was clutching at the fact himself.

'We will have to kill it,' Neytiri said, 'if she cannot come back.'

'Don't think of it now. Ey'wa may decide all things soon enough,' Tsu'tey said. He took the bowl of poultice from her hand and began to smear it on her burn. Neytiri leaned on his shoulder and allowed him to fuss over her, feeling like a little girl with her big brother bandaging up her grazes.

'Come,' he said once he was done, squeezing her hand. 'We will sing a hymn to Ey'wa.'

Neytiri nodded and allowed him to pull her to her feet, trying to sink into the old faithful motions, even though it felt so empty when her mate – because, no matter how often she insisted it was foolish, ridiculous, a mistaken whim, she knew that he had been the one she was meant to choose, and without him it already felt as though something had been scooped out of her heart – wasn't by her side.

They sung the words together, she, and her brother, and her people. Praying for the succour that they had never needed so much. All she could hear were her worries, and her breathing, and the steady chorus of thousands of Na'vi voices.

But then, from somewhere high above, she heard a sound that propelled her to her feet, and filled her mind with instinctual panic.

The fierce, shrieking cry of a _Toruk. _

**A/N: UWAH, has it been a long time since I wrote that AN. But finally, finally, I got round to it, thanks to exams being over and to **moviewriter **sending me a pleading PM this morning to help me get my butt in gear. Many thanks to her and to **.smexy**, **DangoDaikazaku **and anyone else I've forgotten who poked me. We authors love our craft (deep down), but sometimes we need a little forceful nudge to get us going.**

**Thanks, Essence of Gold, for handling the last couple of paragraphs of this chapter.**

**True xxx**


	8. Ey'wa's Answer

**Chapter 8: Ey'wa's answer**

**A/N: This is the part where I blatantly fast-forward past a bunch of scenes, thereby losing myself the UFO award. But whatever; nobody wants to read a re-telling of the movie. It's audience-appropriate.**

**P.S.: Shout out to .smexy, who is basically the reason this fic has been getting written.**

'_Doctor_Grace! _Doctor_Grace!'

Grace opened her eyes blearily. She could see a blurred face moving above her. A blurred, blue face.

'Neytiri?' she said faintly.

The face cracked into a broad smile.

'I see you, _doctor_Grace. You are still with us.'

'Yeah.' Grace took a deep breath, trying to get her bearings. She was lying in a link unit in the tiny research base, which now had jungle pressed up against the windows, still with a bullet hole in her stomach. But the sight of Neytiri did more to make her feel better than anything else so far had done.

'Hey,' she said. 'I didn't think I'd be seeing you again.'

'The people will help you, Grace,' Neytiri promised.

'They've let us into the well of souls.' Grace turned her head, and suddenly Jake was right there, beside her bed, grinning like an idiot. It alarmed her to think how far-gone her perceptions were, that she hadn't noticed him there at all.

'Jake, you…' Words failed her for a moment. 'Jarhead. How on Earth did you manage that?'

Neytiri had never seen Jake's human body before. She kept glancing at him with curiosity, horror, pity, fascination at the inventiveness of the chair with wheels that he moved so dexterously…but with love, too, and such a deep respect that Grace realised immediately that something must be up.

'Jake is _Toruk Maktao_,' she said quietly.

'Jake is…' Grace stopped. 'Oh no. You didn't.'

Jake looked simultaneously sheepish and so proud she thought he might start crowing. 'Yeah, I…I linked with a Toruk. It seemed like the right thing to do.'

'Ey'wa has spoken.' Love and respect had won out over horror for Neytiri. She placed her hand on Jake's shoulder. 'We will protect our home. And we will save you,_ doctor_Grace. She will save you.'

Grace paused, closing her eyes, collecting her scattered thoughts. The people would help her. Even after everything that had happened. Respect, gratitude and a thousand other emotions that she couldn't begin to name surged up inside her, and for a few seconds, words failed her.

She took a long, ragged breath, looked up into Neytiri's green-golden eyes (trying to ignore how they reminded her of _his _eyes), and offered her a weak smile. 'I… I can't thank you enough, Neytiri. And Jake. And the People…'

'Don't worry about it, Grace,' Jake said cheerfully, his eyes crinkling up the corners as he smiled**.**

'_Tonight,_' Neytiri said, switching to Na'vi, _'we will take you to the Tree of Souls, and Mother will make a spell. We are going to ask Ey'wa to preserve your soul, and let it live on in your unharmed body.'_

'_My…my unharmed body?' _Grace echoed.

'_We have the thing you call _avatar_,' _Neytiri said. '_She is safe. She is sleeping.'_

'Our avatars are safe?' Grace said, looking to Jake.

He grimaced. 'Well, mine was lying on the forest floor, covered in ash, but they brought yours.'

'Jarhead.'

'_When will this happen?' _Grace asked Neytiri, and then, before she could stop herself, '_do you think it will work?_'

'_We must wait for the planet to rise, but…'_ Neytiri's face was troubled. '_Mother says we must hurry._' She ran her large blue hand up Grace's arm, pressed it to her chest, then turned to Jake. '_She is tired; can't you feel?'_

'Yeah.' Jake swallowed, his eyes darting to avoid theirs. 'Look, I'm going to head out and keep watch. Norm's up there now; he needs to get some rest.'

He spun out of the room. Neytiri turned her head like a child to watch the quick motion of the chair, then turned back to Grace.

'_I brought some medicine,_' she said. '_It is the ground bark of a tree, to ease the pain. And this is a tea – _' the Na'vi word for a hot infusion of leaves – '_which will make you feel better.'_ She slipped an arm under Grace's shoulders and moistened her lips with liquid from a hide flask. It was bitter, lukewarm, yet at the same time refreshing. Grace managed a couple of mouthfuls before she started to feel sick, and then Neytiri carefully loosened her bandage and began to sprinkle on the poultice she had brought.

Grace watched Neytiri hazily while she worked. Even though it had been years since she had taught in her school, she still couldn't think of Neytiri as anything but the eager, gawky little girl she had been. It was so strange to see her towering above her like this. And she looked like a queen.

'_Neytiri_,' she said suddenly. '_Neytiri, I'm so sorry._'

Neytiri swept her braids back from her face. '_One tree. Our mother is stronger than that._'

'_I didn't expect the people to forgive me_.'

'_You did not have a weapon. You were trying to warn us.'_

'_Yes…Neytiri?'_

'_Yes?'_

'_Do all the people forgive me?'_

'_The _T'sahik_ said it was the will of Ey'wa that we should try to save you. Nobody argues when she says that_.'

'_There must be some who are still angry.'_

'_Angry, yes. But they know they must bite back their anger. They know their anger is unjust.'_

Grace sighed, closing her eyes as her consciousness began to waver again. Biting back one's anger made negotiations possible, but it was no atmosphere for love. She didn't dare mention Tsu'tey name, but her thoughts were full of him. He couldn't have been blindly angry, or he wouldn't have let Jake come back, but she doubted that, proud and testy as he was, he would be all forgiveness.

_It serves you right, _she thought_, for getting in over your head and falling in love with someone who should be the enemy when you're too old for it anyway. And for getting shot._

Whatever was in Neytiri's poultice, it was doing its job. The pain was receding a little, but there was a deep cold in her bones. Grace closed her eyes. Whatever else happened, she had to hang on until sundown.

* * *

They woke her at dusk. Jake had linked with his avatar, and he lifted her in his blue arms as easily as a child. Trudy – she was so glad that Trudy had come through for them, after all that – strapped an Exopack over her face and then watched, wide-eyed and vulnerable, as Jake carried her away. Outside she saw Norm, also in his avatar, and carrying hers.

'Come!'

She heard Neytiri's soft voice calling, and saw her standing at the edge of the trees, looking nervous…and no wonder. Right next to her was the _Toruk_. Only when Jake had linked with it would Neytiri approach. She stepped cautiously forward and helped to manoeuvre Grace up into Jake's arms. Then she sprang up behind them. The _Toruk_ could bear the weight of three Na'vi easily. Grace felt awe.

They flew for five minutes, a dream journey through the bioluminescent darkness, with the wan face of Polyphemus looming ahead. And then the _ikran_ dipped. Peeping between her lashes, Grace saw a pink blur rising up to meet them. It felt almost like coming home.

The _ikran_ landed, and Grace saw Na'vi running forward to help lift her and her avatar down. She felt a surge of astonished love; even after what her race had done, the People were rallying to help her. She thought of all those hours she'd spent teaching in the school, consumed by her work even though she knew that in the end it wouldn't do any good. It seemed that the Na'vi hadn't forgotten.

Norm leapt off his _ikran _and handed her avatar to one of the waiting warriors. He came running to the _Toruk _and reached up, helping to support her weight while Jake and Neytiri clambered down. Grace saw anxiety on his face, and the beginnings of real fear. She felt his arms tighten around her once more, recalled how he and Trudy had worked over her wound with ferocious concentration, and how even when it becme clear that there was nothing more they could do, Trudy had stayed with her, holding her hand, talking to her during her lucid moments all the time they were waiting for Jake…how Jake had tamed the Last Shadow to regain the Na'vis' trust.

Did they really care about her so much?

Their faces were blurred. Suddenly Grace felt her eyes fill with tears. She didn't want to die. She didn't want to leave her friends, leave the forest and the People with all their wealth of secrets. She didn't want oblivion. But it hurt. She couldn't see anything properly; the pain reduced it all to an exhausting confusion of movement. Her belly was full of a slow, deep ache that throbbed every time her blood pulsed, then faced…throbbed and faded…she was so sick of the pain. She had been hurting constantly for twenty-four hours. She wanted it to end.

'Grace,' Jake whispered, trotting beside Norm. 'Grace, look.'

_Go away…_

'Grace.' Jake was smiling, his eyes over-bright. 'It's the Tree of Souls.'

Strength came from who knew where. Enough strength to let her turn her face upwards, to gaze at the shimmering strands that were hanging down above them, shining against the twilight sky. They blurred and brightened before her eyes, a beauty that she could never explain, that had nothing to do with goddesses or coloured lights. The Tree of Souls. The Na'vi's most sacred tree – even more sacred than what Tsu'tey had shown her on the last evening before everything went wrong. Oh God, what else mattered?

'I gotta take some samples,' she murmured.

'Have you brought her, _Jakesully_?'

She recognised that voice. Grace twisted her head round, trying to see. Her curls caught on Norm's arm and got in her eyes, but she made out the towering form of Tsu'tey coming towards them.

'She's here,' Jake answered. His voice sounded strange and echoey. 'She's very weak. We need to act quickly – '

Tsu'tey moved to stand directly in front of Norm.

'I will carry her,' he said, in the kind of voice that no-one ever argues with. His tone was fierce, his expression hard. Norm stayed silent, fumbling in his haste to comply. Grace moaned a little as the transition jarred her wound, and then Tsu'tey was hoisting her into his arms and turning with her towards the tree.

Jake and Norm had lifted her easily, but Tsu'tey lifted her as though she weighed nothing at all. That was how she felt: light, as though a single gust of wind might blow her away. She could hardly find it in herself to think or care about anything anymore, but the corner of her mind that still thought and cared was thinking of him.

'Tsu'tey,' she said. He had begun to climb up towards the central tree, but he moved so lightly that she was barely jolted. As she spoke his name he looked slowly down at her, not altering his pace as he did so. His face was completely blank.

'Don't…' she whispered. Her voice felt frighteningly weak. 'Don't hate me. Please…speak to me…just once.' She raised her hand and managed to brush his jaw with her fingertips.

They had reached the top of the ledge, right underneath the branches of the tree. Tsu'tey stooped and laid her down, so gently she hardly felt it, and began to slide his hands out from under her.

'Tsu'tey!' she whispered again.

He stopped, one hand resting on her shoulder, the other behind her head. As she gazed at him he knelt slowly, bending over her until his face was as low and as close as a human face would have been, and she could make out the barred markings across his cheeks. She felt his fingers tangling themselves slowly into her hair.

'It will be easier when you are one of our kind, _doctor_Grace,' he said, 'but I think I will miss the colour of your skin and hair.'

'My hair?' Grace echoed, and then repeated the words she had heard so many times at school they had become automatic. 'It's ginger.'

;Like flames,' Tsu'tey continued, ignoring the interruption, 'but they don't burn. Only burn in here.' He laid a hand over his heart.

Grace couldn't speak. She only knew that his words were like a shot of adrenaline to her failing heart, setting it pounding wildly despite her injury. Tsu'tey ran his hand across her cheek and then made to draw away.

'No!' She snatched at his wrist. The small action was enough to set her head spinning. 'Wait – '

'Shh!' He leaned suddenly forward, his body bent close over hers. He looked into her eyes. Grace would have pulled her mask off for a better look at his face, if she'd had the strength.

'_I see you, Grace_,' he whispered. 'Pass through the eye of Ey'wa, and come back to us. May she smile upon you.'

'_I see you_,' she mouthed back, her words carried on the faintest breath. Her lips were covered by the mask, so Tsu'tey planted a gentle kiss under her jaw instead. Grace trembled at the touch. Her hand skimmed lightly through his coarse braids and over his neck, then fell back. He released her and stepped away.

Mo'at came forward and crouched beside her, one hand over her head and the other over the head of her avatar. Around them, the Na'vi began a slow, throbbing chant.

The chant got into her blood and helped her heart to beat. It seemed to be pulsing from the ground as well as in the air…and then Grace realised that it was. Tiny filaments of grass and root-hairs were winding up her body, pressing to the back of her neck. It would be so easy…so easy to flow into them…everything was shining. Was it the bioluminescence or the fading of her own vision? Her consciousness changed…it seemed to rush downwards through the grass, upwards into the leaves of the willow, and then suddenly she wasn't anywhere any more…she was floating, no longer in pain but comfortable and warm, and bathed in light.

She heard a sound…a child's bubbling laughter. She realised that there must be a reason why she had heard that one memory out of all the thousands inside the tree – it suddenly came rushing back on her how much she wanted children, how much she wanted to teach in her school house forever. And then, as she blinked back tears, she saw a figure stepping towards her.

Mo'at had been dressed in a fine-spun pink shawl. This person wore the light of the tree itself, draped like a robe; there was a suggestion of a body in the way the light fell, but Grace couldn't see whether it was Na'vi or human. The only clear thing was a woman's face, smiling towards her, and a pair of hands, outstretched in welcome, and so brilliantly lit that they appeared white and she couldn't tell whether they were blue or human-coloured. She couldn't make out the colour of the eyes, either, only that they were far more familiar than any Na'vi eyes she had seen before, and that they were smiling so kindly that all she wanted to do was fall on their owner's shoulder and weep like a little child.

'Mother,' she said, stumbling forward.

'Grace,' the woman replied softly, and she stepped forward to fold Grace in her arms. The brighter light of her clothing was warm, possibly it touched…sensation wasn't quite the same here. The woman held her, and Grace felt the one thing she had been aching to feel ever since she had arrived on Pandora – the sensation of being at one with the forest, rather than a person who could only watch, and who should leave for the forest's own good.

'Oh, mother,' she said again, wrapping her arms around the woman's neck, 'I'm so glad, I'm so glad I'm finally here.'

'Shh!' The woman took her hands and removed them from around her neck. She looked into Grace's eyes. 'Grace, my child, you must go back.'

'Go back?' Grace stared. She could feel the tree buzzing all around her; she sensed that she and the goddess were only a little way removed from the other voices, as though in a private room, and that any moment she could flow away to join them.

'I want to join the people,' she whispered.

'My daughter, you are not ready to become one with me. You must be yourself for a while yet first, and be with others who are also themselves, and whom you need…Jake Sully…Neytiri…Mo'at, my Tsahik…Tsu'tey, Norm, Trudy.'

Warm tears poured down Grace's cheeks, but she believed what the wise woman was saying.

'I will go. I see you, all-Mother. Watch over me.'

'I see you, Grace,' Ey'wa murmured, and let go of her wrists, and Grace was sinking gently, then faster, then falling through blackness…

'Grace!'

She jerked at an impact that wasn't there, as though waking from a dream. Limbs twice as long as she was used to reacted to the impulses from her brain.

It was Jake, his rough voice shouting for her. She searched dazedly, and met his eyes.

'I saw her, Jake,' she said. 'She's real…' She gave a gasp, and suddenly tears were pouring down her cheeks. Jake dragged her up into his arms and hugged her, and more arms seized her from behind – Norm and Neytiri, rushing to embrace her.

'The Dreamwalker lives!' she heard Tsu'tey roar to the crowd. 'Ey'wa has spoken to her!'

'Grace.' Mo'at squatted down in front of her, her face earnest. 'What did you see?'

'She told me…' Grace pulled herself together and raised her voice. 'She told me…that we must all be together! That we need each other…that my time – our time – has not yet come.'

'I will speak to the People,' Jake said, getting to his feet and nodding towards Tsu'tey, 'if you will honour me by translating.'

He began to speak.

'The Sky People have sent us a message, that they can take what they want – our land, our memories, our friends – and that there is nothing we can do to stop them. But they are wrong! We prayed to Ey'wa, and Ey'wa has heard us! They tried to take Grace, but Ey'wa gave her back!'

There was a roar from the assembled crowd.

'So we will send the Sky People a message, that they cannot take what they want from us! We will tell them that these are our lives, and that this – ! This is our land!'

A colossal cheer followed his words. Tsu'tey jumped up beside him.

'At first light, we will send out our _ikran_. The other tribes will aid us!'

Another cheer.

'Come, Grace,' Mo'at whispered in her ear. 'Show yourself to them.'

With Mo'at at one elbow and Neytiri at the other, Grace stood. She flexed her abdomen, waiting for the pain. It didn't come. She still felt weak in every limb, but whole. And she had never been this aware of her avatar before. Some tiny part of her brain had always been back in her body, controlling it. But this was her body now.

She turned back to the old Grace Augustine, lying curled and still beneath the tree. The naked body was pale, the lips and eyelids showing faint violet. The curls showed faintly red in the light of the tree.

Grace touched her own face once, then stepped away from the body and announced,

'My Sky body is empty. Now I am Na'vi: one of the People.'

'How do you feel, Grace?' Mo'at asked, feeling her arm, her pulse, her braid.

Grace considered.

'Hungry.'

'Bring food!' Mo'at shouted.

One of the Na'vi hurried forward, carrying a hunk of rough flat bread, baked from pounded roots, and a bowl of thick nectar. Grace thanked him for the food, sat down cross-legged beneath the tree and fell on it like a wolf. She should have felt self-conscious, eating with the eyes of the whole tribe on her, but she was too hungry and too elated to care.

When she had finished, she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and stood. Already she felt stronger.

'Rest now, Na'vi,' she said. 'We will call the best flyers and speak with them before morning. The rest of you, grow strong!'

Then she took Grace's hand and led her away to the other side of the Tree of Souls.

'_There are various hollows where we take shelter to sleep,_' she told Grace in Na'vi. '_Find a place that suits you, and get some rest_.'

Grace nodded, and Mo'at left her. After a little looking around, she spied a tall tree with thick branches that had cracked and hollowed out. She scrambled up into one of them and looked about. It was perfect; the top of the branch was intact, shielding her head and blocking out some of the phosphorescence from above, but a section of the bark had rotted away in front, allowing her to climb in and then to look out over the Well of Souls and the Na'vi's camp. The solid bottom of the hollow branch had filled up with leaf litter and was already a small garden in its own right, growing a soft bed of the grass that had been perplexing her the first time she spoke to Tsu'tey.

Tsu'tey…

'_Doctor_Grace?'

She stuck her head out of her hollow branch, and there he was, standing below her, looking for all the world like a teenage boy caught throwing pebbles at his sweetheart's window. It suddenly occurred to her to wonder why the messengers were only to set off at dawn.

'Tsu'tey,' she called, waving.

'Uh…may I come up?'

'Yes!' she answered, her stomach flipping. She wondered exactly how many years older than him she was…but then again, this body was about twenty years younger than her old one. And now that she was one of the Na'vi, she was the child again, not him.

There was a scuffling sound and Tsu'tey appeared on her branch. There was a slight pause as they both considered how they were going to fit him in. Grace pressed into the side and Tsu'tey slid in alongside her. There wasn't really enough room to sit and talk politely. Grace had felt nervous, but by the time he had succeeded in getting all the way in they were so close that it was a simple matter for him to take her hand and place his other hand on her waist, and for her to lean her forehead on his shoulder.

They stayed like that for several minutes. Then Tsu'tey asked,

'Are you afraid?'

'No. If we die, we will be with Ey'wa.'

'You really saw her?'

'As clearly as I'm seeing you now.'

As she spoke she wondered. She had heard about these experiences before – people who had been resuscitated reporting visions of angels and pearly gates. Might it all have happened inside her head? Somehow, she didn't really care. It had felt real enough…and it was strong enough to sustain her.

Tsu'tey squeezed her tight.

'I want…to be able to protect my people.'

'I wish I could protect mine too. I wish they would learn to live wisely, so that they could live on a beautiful planet like this one. But until then, I have to fight them.'

'You are very brave.' Tsu'tey ran a hand down her cheek. Grace looked into his eyes, and suddenly smiled, happy.

'Grace – ' he began again, but she shushed him.

'I know,' she said. And she cautiously moved forward.

Tsu'tey's hand slipped around the back of her neck, and they kissed in the blue-lit twilight of the forest. Soon the smallness of the space was forgotten, and they were lying wrapped in each other's arms, skin against skin, their hair mingling, thoughts flowing together. And Grace knew that, whatever might happen tomorrow or the day after, she would always have someone to fight for, and with, and that Ey'wa would always be watching over them.

**~Fin~**

**A/N: I want to say a massive thank you to all the people who have been so supportive and complimentary of this fic, and who have urged me on when I was flagging. I feel that these last few chapters have been a bit sub-standard because I was just trying to get them out, so I apologise for that. Hopefully you found them enjoyable.**

**I couldn't bear to kill Grace in the end. Do you approve?**

**Thank you for flying with True and Essence airlines! **

**True Colours, over and out.**


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